Growth in Transportation ministry is crawling because the minister is a learner—Amiwero
Living encyclopedia in the nation’s transport ministry and maritime industry in particular, Lucky Amiwero has given insights on why developments in the transportation ministry and particularly the Maritime sector are crawling.
Explaining more in an interview, the the National President of National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agent (NCMDLCA), said “The whole industry is confused; the whole system is in confusion. The confused nature of the industry is as a result of the fact that the transport minister, Rotimi Amaechi is not a transporter, he is just a politician”.
According to him, Amaechi was appointed because of the role he played in the last election.
Amiwero argued further that “We need a technocrat because when you bring in people who are learning, our processes will continue to be flawed and that is why the transport sector is crawling. If you look at the past two years, nothing has happened in the sector, it was just a continuation of the Jonathan’s regime”.
“On their own, they have not been able to bring out new policies that will drive the sector, so it is a continuation of the regime. So many things have not been properly placed. There is no professionalism in what is happening in the transport sector. The sector needs people who are technical so that we can be accommodated in the streams of things in the international community.
“What is happening now is that there is lull in the transport sector because of the (lack of) expertise and if we don’t have it, there is nothing we can do about it. So for the past two years, we have been faced with a lot of confusion in the industry.
On why the Customs board has not constituted more than one year after the appointment of Hameed Ali as the Comptroller General, he said “It is left for the government to decide on that because the Customs board is supposed to be constituted by the Minister under the provision of the act so the Minister has defaulted for not constituting the board because Customs is under the purview of the Finance Ministry”.
Continuing, he said “The CG does not have power under the law to pronounce on single window, it is the Finance Minister through the presidency under section 36 sections 18 and 57 of the CEMA Act. The process of single window is under the Ministry of Finance all over the world and not under Customs. The CG does not even have the powers to make pronouncement on import and export”.
