The UN System in Nigeria, alongside partner NGOs are collectively appealing for 1.08 billion dollars to provide urgent aid to 7.8 million vulnerable people in Nigeria’s North East.
The UN says the funding needed was less than 12 dollars a month to save someone’s life.
Mr Edward Kallon, UN Resident Coordinator in Nigeria, made the appeal on Thursday, during a high-level virtual meeting on Nigeria’s humanitarian response with the theme “North-East Nigeria: Act now, Avert the Worst”.
Kallon said the urgent appeal was necessitated, following a resurgence in violence that continued to ravage communities and the extraordinary challenges from the COVID-19 pandemic, a global health crisis no country was adequately prepared for.
He added that the steep rise in prices, as well as movement restrictions, due to the COVID-19 pandemic caused insufferable shocks.
The UN Envoy further noted that an estimated 4.3 million people were now facing food insecurity at crisis or emergency levels and that increased food insecurity would lead to higher levels of malnutrition.
Kallon said that without immediate support, one out of five malnourished children could die without treatment.
“Despite tremendous efforts by the humanitarian community to feed over 2.5 million people, violent attacks continue, preventing people from reaching their lands and rebuilding their livelihoods.
“Every year of the crisis, an additional one million people have become food insecure.
“Children and women, in particular, are bearing the brunt of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prevention measures, such as lockdowns, physical distancing, and school closures are impeding education, jeopardising the future of 4.2 million children.
“Protection concerns are paramount, and the risks of exploitation, domestic violence and abuse are higher than ever, for women, boys and girls.
“At the same time as we are fighting the pandemic, I have been shocked, saddened and outraged by the brutal attacks targeting civilians, including aid workers, in recent weeks.
“Incidents in which villages have been brutally attacked, houses and property set ablaze, and people burnt alive.
“Today, 1.9 million people remain internally displaced in the BAY states. Since the beginning of the year, nearly 60,000 people were forced to flee their homes, some for the second or third time.
“More than a third of these are sleeping out in the open,” Kallon said.
Kallon said funding for the humanitarian operation is at a historic low, explaining that with more than half-way through the year, aid organisations received less than a third of funds needed to provide life-saving assistance to nearly eight million people.
He said now is the time for all stakeholders to take coordinated action, sustained by sufficient resources.
Kallon said the COVID-19 pandemic is devastating and its destabilising effects would be distressing Nigeria’s most fragile region, stressing that unless action was taken now, the country should be prepared for a significant rise in conflict, hunger and destitution in the north-east.
He added that community transmission of COVID-19 is of grave concern and urgent actions must be taken to prevent the virus from taking hold in IDPs’ camps.
He noted that four out of five people in these camps lived in overcrowded conditions, with makeshift and temporary shelters – built in close proximity to each other, making physical distancing impossible.
According to him, while it is a priority for IDPs to be able to return home, unfortunately the persistent insecurity may not yet present conducive conditions for safe, voluntary and dignified returns.
According to Kallon, the hard-won efforts of the UN and partners a few years ago is now in jeopardy, explaining that previous rapid joint mobilisations succeeded in reversing a situation where hundreds of thousands of people were on the verge of famine.
He said that not only was famine averted, but many people who had seen their lives shattered by the conflict, were starting to rebuild their lives and communities. There were hopes that we had turned a corner and we could start focusing on recovery and development
Also speaking, Mr Peter Hawkins, Country Representative of UNICEF in Nigeria, said children, especially those in camps, remained one of the most vulnerable in the COVID-19 pandemic as they were out school with no access to immunisation.
Hawkins said UNICEF was putting measures in place to ensure children had access to Immunisation amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“We will not want to walk out of a pandemic with children dying of measles and infected with polio,” Hawkins said.
Hurdles before 24-hour port operations
The decision of the heads of maritime agencies to partner towards a 24-hour operation at the seaports has been greeted with reactions by operators. In this report, OLUWAKEMI DAUDA looks at some of the issues they raised against the objective.
It is not for nothing that seaports are regarded as the gateway to the economy. As an import dependent economy, Nigerians rely on imports to drive the economy. The irony, however, is that those involved in port operations face a lot of problems.
These include dearth of port infrastructure, policy inconsistenc and poor attitude of regulators and law enforcement agents.
A new thinking
There is a new thinking by the heads of the maritime agencies to get the ports working round the clock.
The Director-General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Bashir Jamoh, during the week, told reporters that the agencies had decided to harmonise their operations into one interface station to achieve an efficient 24-hour port operation.
He said the heads of agencies agreed to facilitate 24-hour daily operation. He said this would help to decongest the ports and impact positively on the Ease of Doing Business policy of the Federal Government.
Jamoh said they had formed a committee to produce a work plan, and agreed to carry communities around the ports along to ensure safe operations.
He said: “We are looking at the workability of 24-hour port services to ease the pressure on our ports in terms of congestion. We also agreed to work with the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) on how movement of cargoes from the ports can be done by rail to reduce the pressure on our roads.
“Our focus is also to ensure containers are moved by barges to dry ports outside the port environment. All these would help in the efficiency and effectiveness of our ports.”
Thumbs up for 24-hour operations
Some stakeholders are convinced that the move will turn around the fortunes of the seaports. One of them is the former President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu, who said if the port failed to execute the 24-hour operation, it would lose its international competitiveness.
Reform measures that will promote the 24-hour operation, he said, must not only be formulated by the chief executive officers, but implemented.
“The Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Ms Hadiza Bala-Usman; Executive Secretary, Nigerian Shippers Council, Mr Hassan Bello; Director-General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr Bashir Jamoh; Managing Director National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Dr George Muoghalu; Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and other heads of government agencies that have something to do with cargo evacuation from the ports must come together and develop and manage a timetable for achieving 24-hour operation to reduce costs and a reduction of the time between the entry into port and acceptance of delivery to 24 hours.
“To take them serious, the heads of these agencies need to launch quickly, the ‘common portal’ in the port to complete import or export procedures with a single input-transmission action at a site. In this respect, they must ensure that everything that needs to do with cargo clearance needs to be standardised and integrated,” Shittu said.
The spokesman of the terminal operators Mr Bolaji Akinola told The Nation that the decision of the CEOs of the ports agencies to work together is a good development and assured that the concessionaires were ready for the 24-hour operation.
An importer, Mr Johnson Emmanuel said the new initiative on 24-hour accessibility to the port would be a major milestone in economic development.
“It would increase the ability of concessionaires to serve the people and businesses, and the sub-region. Trade policy and other reforms will, in no doubt, help to stimulate foreign direct investment and increase cargo ing to Tin Can port in Lagos is so bad that some stakeholders have described it as a “shame of a nation”.
This port access road leading to Nigeria’s busiest ports Lagos is in a sorry state as port users spend hours daily to access or exit the terminals.
Instances abound where containers fall off trucks as a result of the poor state of the port access roads and in the process, vehicles were damaged and innocent lives lost.
Already, importers and exporters have decried the deplorable state of the port access roads, saying that it did not portray Nigeria as serious and ready to do business outside the oil and gas industry.
President, Shippers Association, Lagos State (SALS), Mr. Jonathan Nicol, said the deplorable roads linking Apapa Quay and Tin Can ports, Apapa is a national disgrace, wondering why the authorities allow things to deteriorate to this level.
A truck driver and member of Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), Mr Ibrahim Yahya, said: “I want the heads of the agencies tell us the reason it is difficult for trucks to access the Tin Can port through Oshodi/Apapa Expressway. So, the talk about 24-hour operation will not work. I think it is a misplacement of priority. If there is a security alert, how will the security operatives move? All those that work in Apapa come to work on motorbike despite the ban placed on it by the Lagos State government. ”The CEOs need to ensure the roads are fixed and the electronic call-up system are in place before talking about 24 hours operation.”
Another importer, Mr Damilare Ashafa, however, said the 24-hour operation might not work unless they ensure the government addresses some of the major challenges facing the port.
Ashafa identified lack of scanners, poor power supply, primitive data processing system and extortion by security agents attached to the port as some of the factors responsible for the inability of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) to clear goods within 24 hours.
Investigation revealed while work at the Apapa Port in the day had been epileptic due to the server failure; at night, work is paralysed by poor power supply. As a result, the Customs officials rely on generators to power some of their offices while some use rechargeable lamps.
A senior Customs officer, who craved anonymity, said there must be constant power supply to achieve the 24-hour cargo clearance.
Incentives for 24-hour operations
The acquisition of four 60-tonne buller-pull tug boats with state-of-the-art equipment and computerised engines by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Aborisade and other stakeholders said, would boost the 24-hour operations for the first time in many decades, efficiency and increase government revenue.
Investigation revealed that the clearing time of goods at the seaports is about the longest in the world. While it takes an average of 20 days to clear cargos at the ports, importers said it takes less than four days to clear cargos in South Africa.
Concession agreement
Stakeholders have accused the government of not fulfilling its part of the concession agreement, which they claimed, has resulted in the poor state of the ports.
In the concession agreement exclusively obtained by The Nation, there are aspects of government’s provision of common user-facility, which include the ports access road in a sorry state provision of uninterrupted electricity along the road and within the port environment, including viable rail network to facilitate cargo movement in and out of the ports. But the government, findings revealed, has not fulfilled its part of the agreement.
Way forward
Heads of the maritime agencies must ensure that the Federal Government performs its own core responsibilities as entrenched in the concession agreement so that it can hold other operators accountable for their inefficiency in the efforts to achieve 24-hour operations.
