Analyses

Now That Moghalu Has Lost

Eyewitness reporter

George Moghalu, the Managing Director of National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) was among the 14 candidates who contested the All Progressive Party (APC) governorship primary for the November 6th governorship elections in Anambra state.

At the party’s Anambra state primary election held last week, Moghalu came a distant third, losing the APC ticket to Senator Andy Uba.

According to the results announced Sunday, June 27th, 2021 at Golden Tulips Hotel, Agulu Lake, the NIWA boss garnered 18, 596 votes to come a distant third to Senator Uba, who grossed 230, 201 votes, thus putting paid to the ambition of Moghalu to govern Anambra state, at least in the next four years.

We are not by any means celebrating the electoral defeat of the NIWA boss nor gloating over the temporary setback in his electoral fortunes.

But what the Anambra people may have lost in denying Moghalu the APC ticket to vie for the highest position in the state, is now the NIWA gains.

We believe that now that Moghalu has lost in his ambition to run the state, at least at this period, he would now give maximum concentration to the administration of inland waterways in the country.

Chief Moghalu, a core member of the ruling party, was appointed as the Managing Director of NIWA in October 2019 to replace Senator Olorunbe Mamora who was appointed as the Minister of State for Health.

Until his appointment in 2019, Moghalu was the National Auditor of his party.

Stakeholders claimed he was a reluctant NIWA boss as he still had his eyes firmly fixed on politics and how to fulfil his ambition to become the governor of Anambra State at the time he took over in 2019.

His action and miens betrayed his political ambition even while he reluctantly assumed duties at the Lokoja headquarters of the agency.His political ambition, which he could barely conceal, even at the early stage of his tenure, divided his attention and impaired his performance in the discharge of his core duties as NIWA boss.

The harvest of avoidable mishaps on the waterways, lack of will power by NIWA to enforce standard and regulations on the operators clearly showed management which lacked commitment and focus.

The failed state of some of our River ports, the under-utilisation of Onitsha Rivers Port, which one thought could have engaged his attention for obvious reasons, was also a pointer to leadership with divided interests.

The lifeless nature of NIWA’s leadership got to an alarming proportion when the waterways began to witness almost daily mishaps.

Stakeholders, who were concerned by the apparent lack of commitment and focus of NIWA leadership, began to voice out their trepidation over gradual decay and rot on our waterways.

They blamed lack of will to enforce regulations, safety, standard, and lack of regulation such as overloading, night voyage, rickety and old craft as causes of mishaps on the inland waterways.

The erstwhile President of Nigerian Shipowners Association (NISA), Alhaji Aminu Umar, believed that enforcement of safety and standard on the nation’s inland waterways is weak.

“I think the task of NIWA is to standadise safety conditions and procedures on the nation’s waterway.

“There is no standard applied on the movement of people as all kind of boats are being used. It is important that we standardise because lack of safety and standard will increase accident.”

Umar was also alarmed at the unregulated movement of barges with passengers boats which he said was accidents in waiting, blaming it on the lack of weak regulatory powers of NIWA.

He said it’s a huge risk allowing badges moving containers around the port area to be moving side by side with boats moving passengers and vessels approaching the Lagos Ports.

“Moving people and containers at the same time is a huge risk and a safety concern. NIWA and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), should see to this,”

Another concerned stakeholder, a professor at the Lagos Business School, Dr. Frank Ojadi, was alarmed at the level to which the Nigerian inland waterways has deteriorated.

He said it was shameful that the nation’s Inland waterways are in ruins and left to rot away instead of being a catalyst for development.

” The Inland Waterway Transport was the platform on which the colonial masters built Nigeria before the railway. It is a shame that it has been left to decay. That is how we do things in this country,” he said.

Also speaking, a member of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Kenneth Nwachukwu, asked why it was so difficult for NIWA to enforce the banning of night sailing, use of life jacket and overcrowding of boats?

“That the MD is unable to ban night sailing, use of life jacket and overloading is another testament that a lot still needed to be done to clean-up our inland waterways”.

The alarm raised by these stakeholders was an eloquent testimony to the level of loose control from the leadership of NIWA and this could be the function of lack of commitment and focus.

That is why stakeholders said the loss of Moghalu in the APC primaries, though painful, was a blessing for NIWA.

They believe the loss will now afford Moghalu ample time to focus on how to direct the affairs of NIWA to achieve maximum efficiency.

“Now that he has lost, he should concentrate on the job he is being paid for,” an angry operator on the nation’s inland waterways said.

“We urge him to pay more attention on how to enforce standard and safety on the waterways to forestall further loss of lives and properties on the waters” another stakeholder interjected.

The stakeholders believed the relative calm and safety on the Lagos waterways was largely due to the activities and purposeful leadership of the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) which has been proactive, focused and committed in its quest to enforce discipline on the waterways.

“If left for NIWA, the Lagos waterways could also have witnessed the similar harvest of mishaps as the case in other parts of the country,” another operator said.

“NIWA has practically gone into a coma under its present management as the activities of the agency are not being felt going by the regular mishaps that happen on our waterways where it is now free for all for all kind of boats and crafts whose operators have no or little regards for standard and safety,” an expert in the industry said.

It is therefore the general wish of all stakeholders that Chief Moghalu, now that he has lost the Anambra state APC primary election, would give his assignment at NIWA the utmost priority, maximum and committed attention it deserves in order to bring order and sanity to the nation’s waterways.

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Analyses

The National Single Window Illusion: Why phase two cannot succeed on paper

Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim

The official rollout of Phase One of the National Single Window (NSW) was heralded as a monumental leap toward a paperless, automated trade ecosystem.

On paper and within executive dashboards, the achievements are clear: the serialization of Licenses, Certificates, and Permits (LCPO), streamlined electronic manifest transmissions, and integrated risk management for primary regulators like SON and NAFDAC.

Yet, as the steering committee aggressively prepares for the imminent deployment of Phase Two, a severe operational reality check is required.

The claim that the Single Window has successfully “taken off” remains a purely administrative illusion when measured against the brutal, manual friction remaining at our terminal gates.

The core vulnerability of the current transition is the absolute failure to align digital front-end clearances with physical back-end enforcement.

Importers are successfully navigating the centralized National Single Window Portal, obtaining official electronic green lights, only to watch their consignments get trapped by manual human greed the moment the cargo hits the access roads.

Phase Two promises end-to-end electronic customs clearance, full payment digitization, and automated interoperability with the Nigeria Customs Service’s new B’Odogwu Unified Customs Management System.

However, if the federal administration continues to pour billions into software updates while leaving parallel manual check-points unpunished, Phase Two will simply become a highly expensive digital facade masking an archaic extortion regime.

True trade facilitation is not a technological achievement; it is a direct function of political will.

The integration of advanced platforms like B’Odogwu across major commands like Apapa and Tin Can proves that our regulatory arms possess the technical capability to automate. The problem is cultural and financial.

Entrenched administrative empires are deliberately preserving parallel manual structures because documentation loops, artificial delays, and manufactured compliance flags remain incredibly lucrative.

For the National Single Window to transition from a policy delusion into a genuine economic catalyst, the state must move past cosmetic celebrations.

The presidency must deploy the executive power required to completely outlaw physical interventions outside the approved digital framework and enforce severe punitive consequences for any agency chief who authorizes parallel verification processes.

Until the gate complies with the portal, the National Single Window project remains grounded.

Chief Ibrahim Nasiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja

Analyses

The National Single Window illusion: Why phase two is dead on arrival

Chief Nasiru Ibrahim

Tomorrow on Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim, I am dropping part three of my maritime audit, ‘The Single Window Illusion: Why Phase Two is Already Grounded.

For months, our regulatory class has hidden behind the glossy public relations of automated portals, celebrating the ‘take-off’ of Phase One.

But a cold look at the raw data reveals a terrifying truth: we are running a digitised facade over a broken, manual rent-seeking ecosystem.

Tomorrow , I shall be exposing the massive operational disconnect between the new B’Odogwu Customs System and the brutal, manual greed at the terminal gates.

You cannot claim to master trade velocity when parallel checkpoints, erratic human intervention, and bridge shakedowns are hardcoded into the Apapa corridor.

Tomorrow, we strip away the illusions and confront the structural arithmetic holding our supply chains hostage.

Lock your dials on this platform. The clock is ticking.

Analyses

Dual clearing: The secret racket killing Single Window

Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim

Following my recent exposure of the manual shakedowns trapping the National Single Window, we must now look at the deeper, institutional civil war rendering this multi-billion naira portal useless.

True port modernization is measured by the complete eradication of manual physical interventions, not by the mere proliferation of web portals.

As Nigeria aggressively pushes the operational boundaries of its digital trade infrastructure to meet international benchmarks, an objective policy audit reveals a glaring structural disconnect.

The ongoing implementation strategy focuses almost entirely on software acquisition and portal integration while completely ignoring the brutal institutional resistance embedded within the primary regulatory agencies.

This critical blind spot is turning a premier trade facilitation tool into a redundant administrative layer.

The core operational trap of the current framework is the deliberate preservation of parallel manual verification structures.

For a single window system to function optimally, every participating agency—including the Nigeria Customs Service, NAFDAC, SON, and the NDLEA—must entirely surrender their independent, siloed databases to a unified digital risk assessment engine.

Instead, what obtains across Nigerian maritime gateways is an absurd system of dual processing.

An importer clears his cargo through the centralized digital portal and receives an official electronic release, only to encounter multiple physical enforcement teams, specialized task forces, and roaming federal operations units stationed just meters outside the terminal gates, demanding a manual re-examination of the exact same consignment.

This structural contradiction completely defeats the entire purpose of trade facilitation.

It exposes the fact that the primary resistance to port automation is not technological, but cultural and financial.

The manual desk architecture remains incredibly lucrative for a network of entrenched interests who profit directly from artificial delays, manufactured non-compliance flags, and complex documentation loops.

By allowing these parallel manual structures to co-exist with the digital portal, policymakers have effectively trapped the maritime industry in a loop of perpetual inefficiency.

The digital dashboard shows a green light of completion, but the physical reality on the Port access roads remains gridlocked by manual human greed, where electronic clearances are routinely ignored in favour of physical bargaining.

For the National Single Window to transition from an institutional delusion into a genuine economic catalyst, the federal administration must deploy the political will to completely outlaw physical interventions and dismantle the rogue checkpoints that neutralize the power of digital trade.

We must move past the cosmetic celebrations of launching new portals and confront the administrative empires actively sabotaging the ease of doing business.

The government must establish strict punitive consequences for any agency chief who authorizes parallel verification processes outside the approved digital framework.

Until the state enforces absolute inter-agency data integration and aggressively punishes units running parallel manual rackets, the single window will remain an expensive digital facade masking an archaic, paper-based extortion regime.

Chief Ibrahim Nasiru, a public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja