Shippers’ Council hosts West African Container Terminal team

The Nigerian Shippers’ Council, South-South Zonal office in Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, last week played host to a team of management staffers from the West African Container Terminal WACT, located within the Onne Ports Complex, who was on a courtesy visit to the country’s Economic Regulator for the seaport industry.

Speaking during the visit, Zonal Coordinator of the Council, Mr. Glory Onojedo, who led other top management staff to give a warm reception to the visiting team, thanked the management of WACT for finding time to visit the Council.

He listed some of the challenges encountered by officials of the Council in trying to perform their duties of enforcing the mandate of the Council to include the inability to access WACT facilities, as they were prevented by the security personnel of the company.

He further disclosed that the NSC officials are usually stopped at the entrance of the WACT office by these security personnel, which he suspected was a deliberate effort to stop the Council’s officials from overseeing the port activities at the WACT terminal.

While acknowledging some of the challenges that were being faced at Onne, which include but not limited to poor state of access roads, which are currently being fixed, Mr. Onojedo lauded WACT for providing shelter for agencies and other stakeholders operating at Onne Seaport, as well as its newly introduced initiative known as Container Freight Station (CFS).

On its recently launched Online Registration Portal for port operators and users, Mr. Onojedo noted that the essence of the registration portal is for Nigerian Shippers’ Council to know the real players across the ports, pointing out that a time would come when those players that are not registered or recognised by Shippers’ Council will not have access to the ports across the nation, adding that the essence of regulation is to ensure compliance.

Meanwhile, General Manager, Government Relations, WACT, Mr. Innocent Ogbuji, who led the delegation on the visit, said the essence of the visit was to inform the Council that WACT recently reshuffled its management team, hence the need to introduce the new team to the Nigerian Shippers’ Council.

Mr. Ogbuji, who also spoke on the digitalised nature of WACT’s operations at the Onne Port, among others, lauded Mr. Glory Onojedo for being supportive to WACT, and used the visit to proffer solutions on the issues of non -accessibility to WACT, among others that were raised by Mr. Onojedo, for onward unlimited access and communication with WACT.

The new Managing Director of WACT Mr. Jeethu Jose and the new Commercial Manager, Mr. Ismaila Badjie, who were among the visiting team, expressed their heart-felt gratitude on the warm reception accorded them by the NSC team.

While responding on some of the issues raised during the visit, which hinged on mutual working relationship, seamless operations and working in synergy to boost the economy of the country the duo assured that the new management team of WACT was poised for a robust synergy with all agencies and relevant stakeholders to enhance seamless port operations.

Director, Public Relations of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, Mrs. Patricia Osumaw in her closing remarks, commended the MD of WACT, Mr. Jeethu Jose and his management team for such a wonderful visit. She requested that such interactions and collaborative meetings should be more frequent to enhance their respective work performances.

High points of the visit include the formal introduction of the two new management officers and signing of the visitors’ register by Mr. Jeethu Jose.