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The Gradual Decapitation of Shippers’ Council under Jime.

Arguably, the Nigeria Shippers’ Council is gradually losing its bite.
The council, which was bequeathed to the present Executive Secretary of the agency,  Emmanuel Jime, by the vibrant and energetic Hassan Bello, its immediate past  CEO, is becoming a lame duck, a toothless bulldog that is gradually losing the sting, ferocity, and vibrancy it acquired under the immediate past helmsman.
Unfortunately, Jime, a politician, who took over the mantle of leadership when his predecessor honourably bowed out of service, is presiding over a whimper of a council, which is gradually becoming colourless in character and hollow in value.
The current face-off between the freight forwarders and the shipping companies has exposed the extent to which the council has lost respect, character and bite within the short period that Jime took over, and these are the vital attributes that the retired Bello has built into the agency.
Before Bello took over the council and shortly after it transmuted into the industry economic regulator, Shippers Council was greatly incapacitated with a voice not more than that of a whimpering child: muffled, shaky, devoid of life and confidence.
But immediately Bello, widely regarded as one of the best and finest technocrats to have passed through the industry, took over the whimpering child, he polished the colourless agency into a formidable, respectable and effective regulator whose words were order to which the powerful but arrogant shipping companies have come to defer and hold in reverence.
But after the exit of  Bello, the Shippers’Council she bequeathed is gradually losing its taste and value for which it was known.
The face-off between the shipping companies and customs brokers has brought this unfortunate reality to the fore.
In October this year, angry freight forwarders issued a two-week ultimatum to the predominantly foreign shipping companies in the country over their unbridled and mindless extortion perpetrated through numerous illegal charges.
They listed their grievances which they wanted to be addressed without which they will ground port operations.
Even though the contending matters are within the sphere of influence of the Shippers’Council, it was the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding Practices in Nigeria(CRFFN) that took the initiative to broker peace between the two feuding parties when it convened a peace meeting.
The Shippers Council, the economic regulator, was only coopted into the peace meeting when it became glaringly clear that it has lost the initiative to be proactive.
Notwithstanding the presence of the Council which is their regulator, the arrogant shipping companies snubbed the peace meeting when they refused to attend.
Undaunted though, the CRFFN, which has clearly seized the initiative from the laid-back and lacklustre Shippers’ Council, reconvened the peace meeting last week Friday with the Council tagging along with other agencies like a lame duck.
Once again, the shipping companies, even though reluctantly sent representatives, didn’t accord much respect to the conveners of the meeting.
With annoying arrogance, the service providers partially conceded to one out of the numerous demands of the aggrieved freight forwarders when they agreed to give them six days period of grace for demurrage instead of the 14 days grace the freight forwarders asked for.
Even, the six days grace period was not clearly defined but dumped on them with you- can- go- to- hell -if- you- don’t want- it – attitude.
Expectedly, neither the Shippers’Council nor the CRFFN could do anything as the meeting was deadlocked.
The outcome of this issue has clearly defined the present state of the Shippers’Council.
It has clearly exposed the council under the present leadership as one which lacks the capacity to protect the interests of shippers it was created for.
It has shown a council that has lost the initiative to act and one which is not proactive.
It has lost the verve, glamour and the springy movement it was known for under the past leadership.
The freight forwarders themselves have expressed their lack of confidence in the ability of the  Council to resolve the lingering issues and stave off the impending strike which the customs brokers have vowed to embark on at the expiration of the new ultimatum, given the deadlocked peace meeting.
Although the shipping companies are not better in character and temperament under the past leadership of the council, Bello was still able to rein them in with his high level of interaction, engagement, consultations and high wire diplomacy that made the  Council achieve a considerable level of compliance and cooperation among the service providers.
Though the battle was tough and long-drawn as the recalcitrant shipping companies resorted to litigation to entrench their operational impunity, they however found the sheer determination, resilience, passion and uncompromising attitude of Barrister Hassan Bello too strong to break.
Does the present ES possess such attributes that helped his predecessor to succeed?
Only time will tell.
But the signal of lethargy, despondency, and lack of direction exhibited by the council so far in handing its core mandate in the early days of the current leadership, gives no reason to cheer and the situation was compounded by the equally visionless public affairs department of the council which is headed by a person of similar professional incompetent genes.
It clearly shows that Jime has inherited an oversized shoe.
The highly exploitative shipping companies may want to take advantage of the lack of will of the present leadership of the council to renew their onslaught on the users of their services.
They may want to exploit lack of experience in the workings of the industry of the present helmsman at the Shippers’ Council to unleash operational terror on the weary freight forwarders.
The present face-off between them and the freight forwarders is a test case.
If the Shippers’Council and the CRFFN fail to broker a truce between the two warring parties and stave off the impending service disruption, then Jime would have failed his first assignment as the Chief Executive officer of an economic regulator which has failed to tame one of its constituents.
Then and unfortunately too, that will signal the beginning of the descent of the council into the pre-Bello era when the agency was a toothless bulldog, which could only bark but shy to bite.
The reason for the sudden dip in the fortune of the council may not be far-fetched if we look at the antecedents of all the agencies of government where top appointments were used as political patronage to rehabilitate politicians, especially those who suffered political setbacks.
Unlike his predecessor, Barrister Hassan Bello, who is an industry man that rose through the ranks in the Shippers Council,  Hon. Emmanuel Jime is a thoroughbred politician and former APC governorship candidate in Benue State whose passion for ruling the state may still have an overring place in his mind.
That has always been the fate of government parastatals which are headed by active politicians as all other assignments will take a back seat in the pursuit of their political goals and ambition.
The same scenario is playing out at the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) where an active politician heads the agency whose 2022 budget proposal was recently dismissed by members of the Senate committee who described the presentation of NIWA’s  Chief Executive as incoherent and inconsistent with the figures presented.
Contrast this with the cheering performance and runaway achievements being recorded at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) whose Chief Executive, just like Barrister Bello, is a  ”home boy”, a home-grown, thoroughbred professional.
Or better still juxtapose that with the impressive runs of the helmsman at MAN, Oron who is also not a politician but professional.
You can call them a tale of two cities. One headed by politician and the other by professional.
The success of the present ES in his onerous task of steering the ship of the Council will however depend on the willpower, cooperation and commitment of the Directors he inherited who were part of Bello’s roaring success.
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Commentaries

National Single Window: Beyond analogue horizon

Ibrahim Nasiru

Tomorrow on Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim, my National Single Window series Part Four drops: ‘The Green Port Imperative: Beyond the Analogue Horizon.’

True automation cannot stop at front-end software like the new B’Odogwu Customs System.

It must extend to the hard, physical operations on the ground.

You cannot claim to build a modern maritime gateway while thousands of diesel-guzzling trucks remain trapped in manual bottlenecks along the Apapa and Tin Can access corridors.

Tomorrow, we look past the paper declarations and audit the raw infrastructure execution required to save our maritime future.

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

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Commentaries

Beyond the presidential signature: NPERA and new enforcement reality of Nigerian Ports

Ibrahim Nasiru

President Bola Tinubu’s assent to the Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) Bill, 2026, is the single most consequential legislative event in the modern history of our maritime domain.

Announced on August 13, 2026, by the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Dr. Pius Akutah, this law marks the definitive end of regulatory hesitation at our Port gates.

For over a decade, the Nigerian Shippers’ Council operated under a crippling structural handicap.

Drafted as an interim economic regulator by policy directive in 2014, the Council was essentially a referee without a whistle.

It relied heavily on moral suasion, diplomatic mediation, and advocacy to get things done.

Multinational shipping lines and terminal concessionaires knew this systemic weakness and exploited it.

They routinely dragged the Council to court to stall enforcement, buy time, and protect their arbitrary local charges.

NPERA completely dismantles that analogue era of compromise. This is not the creation of a fresh, bloated bureaucratic agency; it is a statutory evolution.

The Nigerian Shippers’ Council has officially been weaponized into an independent, executive umpire backed by the full raw enforcement powers of an Act of Parliament.

The immediate message to the maritime community is loud and direct: the era of arbitrary tariff regimes and parallel pricing structures is officially dead.

Under the new NPERA framework, the agency holds exclusive statutory powers to approve, review, or freeze Port costs.

Any shipping line or terminal manager attempting to introduce unapproved local handling fees or manipulative demurrage timelines will face immediate, binding legal sanctions.

Crucially, this new law draws a hard line under the chronic agency supremacy tussles that have choked national productivity for years.

The operational boundaries are now mathematically clear. The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) remains the technical landlord. NIMASA retains control over safety and marine security. NPERA steps in as the supreme financial and economic regulator.

Furthermore, the introduction of specialized administrative arbitration tribunals means shippers no longer have to endure years of delayed litigation in civilian courts to resolve commercial disputes.

Wrongful container detentions and predatory monopolies can now be penalised within a specialized regulatory framework.

However, stakeholders must understand that this transition operates on a tight bureaucratic clock.

While the policy freeze on unapproved tariffs is immediate, the next 90 days will see the formal gazetting and full asset migration into the new legal structure.

By late 2026, mandatory statutory registration for all active maritime service providers will become an unyielding reality.

The signature on the bill is a massive victory, but paper alone cannot clear a port corridor.

The newly empowered leadership of NPERA must immediately deploy these legal teeth to smash the manual bottlenecks and parallel checkpoints that undermine our trade velocity.

The law has changed, the referee finally has a whistle, and the industry must align with this new enforcement reality.

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

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Commentaries

Two years of Dantsoho at NPA: The architecture of  efficiency boom

Ibrahim Nasiru

This July, Dr. Abubakar Dantsoho marks exactly two years as the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), providing a vital opportunity to separate institutional noise from actual structural progress.

For decades, Nigeria’s maritime gateways were plagued by massive infrastructural deficits, manual gridlocks, and fragmented policies.

Today, through a deliberate blend of home-grown institutional experience and top-tier academic expertise in maritime technology, Dantsoho is rewriting that narrative from the inside out.

He has successfully shifted the NPA away from reactive firefighting and anchored it firmly on aggressive, infrastructure-led growth.

His two-year legacy is anchored on absolute automation and massive capital injection.

By securing a landmark $1 billion in dedicated modernization funding for the comprehensive rehabilitation of aging gateways and aggressively spearheading the National Single Window infrastructure, his office is systematically eliminating the human bottlenecks that feed desk corruption at the Ports.

This structural renaissance is not just about aesthetics; it is about rebuilding the foundational complexes of Apapa, Tin Can Island, Onne, and Calabar to withstand the demands of modern global trade.

The financial reward for this fiscal discipline is already evident, with the authority confidently pacing toward an unprecedented ₦1.489 trillion revenue peak for the 2026 fiscal year.

This massive revenue trajectory cements Nigeria’s role as West Africa’s undisputed trade hub and proves that the administration’s fiscal leaks are being blocked effectively through digital transformation.

By driving the final operational phases of the Port Community System (PCS) to anchor the newly approved National Single Window, Dantsoho is systematically transforming the clearing ecosystem from a manual bureaucrat’s playground into a highly transparent, hyper-efficient digital gateway.

While local operators and stakeholders continue to demand closer engagement, Dantsoho’s strategic blueprint demonstrates that his focus remains entirely on delivering the long-awaited structural environment where every maritime stakeholder can seamlessly thrive.

Sustainable stakeholder engagement isn’t about cosmetic public relations; it is about deploying top-tier technocratic expertise to build a Port ecosystem where trade flows seamlessly, predictably, and profitably.

With automated transshipment channels opening up to landlocked neighbouring countries via Lekki Deep Seaport, the foundation for total ease of doing business has finally been poured.

What makes Dantsoho’s career worth celebrating over the last twenty-four months is the climate in which he has delivered these reforms.

In an era where international shipping lines are highly sensitive to operational delays, the NPA has aggressively reduced ship turnaround times and improved cargo throughput.

This latest two-year milestone is a timely reminder that while maritime challenges are complex, the value of raw human integrity, deep institutional memory, and consistent high-quality output can never be replaced.

Dr. Abubakar Dantsoho has proven that he is not just a placeholder in office, but an architect building the future of Nigerian maritime trade.

Chief Ibrahim Nasiru, public affairs analyst, writes from Abuja

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