Ahmed Aminu Yar'Adua is an Architect, but today he is the managing Director of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA). His civil service career started in 1983 when he joined the Katsina State Ministry of Works and Housing. He then rose through the ranks to become permanent secretary, Special Duties at the Governor's Office, and later permanent secretary, Ministry of Works and Housing, before crowing it all as secretary to the state government in 2007. Yar'Adua who was appointed in 2009 to head NIWA, spoke with DAVID OGAH recently. He linked dearth of water transportation business in the country to many years of neglect of the agriculture and diverted attention to roads construction and patronage after independence. Excerpts:NIWA was basically established to develop water transportation in Nigeria, and to address problems associated with it. But for many years, these problems have lingered and water transportation as the alternative to road transportation in Nigeria is still not feasible. Why'The concept of water transportation as an alternative to road transportation is laudable, but NIWA can only do what it is sure it can do as a regulator and as an operator. But it takes much more than just establishing an authority for you to change the psyche of the people. Over the years, almost 30 years or 40 years ago, all we have been doing is road transportation. So all the facilities, all the thinking, the attitude in our society is towards road transportation. So, for us to change that, it will take more than one, two, three and four years of effort NIWA. But we are doing what we can, through the help of gentlemen of the press and the federal government. NIWA as an authority is doing what it can to change the trend, particularly now when we have started addressing the fundamental problems which is mitigating against the development of Inland Waterways Transport in Nigeria. One of course, is the issue of distortion of our rivers. Distortion in terms of sand, distortion in terms of materials on the waters and even hyacinth on the waters, but we have started addressing them. We have started looking at principal rivers in Nigeria. The Federal Government, through NIWA, has dredged River Niger, we are also in the process of starting the dredging of River Benue, from Makurdi to Lokoja. Now, we are doing the costing of all the other principal rivers in Nigeria for dredging. Another issue of course, that is very important, is the issue of the type of businesses itself on water. For water transportation in the '50s, you can have agricultural goods moving from the Northern part of the country through the River Niger to the coast. So, we need the government to revive agriculture to bring back the good old days. And I think the Federal Government is doing its best. We also need the business community to articulate the use of inland water transportation. We are talking to them in our own way. Some of them have started to respond, particularly in the South South and in the North East. They have started to see how cheap it is to go through the waters. Certainly the initial capital to start could be high. You need money to buy barges, tug boats and so on. But by the time you buy them, it can last for 20, 30 years. People keep asking us how are we going to maintain the channels. So we are talking with some business people and high level engineering companies to come together and form a consortium for channel management. I think we have some channel management working in Lagos for NPA; DT International and LCM. Anything we are doing, we try to factor in private investors to come in and work with us and to tell them that there is money to be made. By so doing, wealth and employment would be created.We are working with some companies to buy some passenger vessels, to move people from Oron to Calabar. These are all important waterfronts. Last month, the Federal Government approved for us to buy a 45 passenger vessels, and we want to see if we can operate it between Lokoja and Onitsha, and another one from Onitsha through River Orashi to Bomadi. Of course, we intend to buy more. But that is the pioneered ones we want to start operating. So, we are also talking to the big transporters themselves for them to come in and used the waterways as another point where they can transport people from one point to another.For example, they can move people from Onitsha to Lokoja, and from Lokoja to the Northern parts of the country. So, we have started discussion with the big time transporters. We have started talking to big time container importers, to show them how they can now use the waterways to bring their containers to the middle part of the country and Northern part of the country. We agreed that it will take sometime, but by God grace, we will get there.This is a fundamental issue you raised, that agriculture is important to water transportation system. So, without agriculture, there won't be development of water transportation in Nigeria'You see, time change. In the 40s and 50s all we had then was agricultural produce, I just sighted an example. Because that time, that was the only product available for transportation. But today, there are other products or businesses beside agriculture. We are now talking of oil and gas products we have in Nigeria. Recently, we had contract with the NNPC on this Kogi green refinery. One of the two or three refineries, I think to be constructed by the federal government. One is in Kogi Bayelsa and in Lagos. The one in Kogi, they contacted us on the possibility of bringing crude oil through the water from Warri to Kano. These are modern projects. They are talking of almost 8,000 barrels per day or so. So they are factoring in the design now of the refinery project bring crude oil through the waters as part of the factors they are considering in the design. Containers are modern projects and on the road, you will see a lot of trailers bringing in containers to the northern part of the country. They can be transported through the waters too. Recently, transporters have started to move tiles or ceramic tiles from Lokoja to Onitsha through the River Niger. So there are modern projects you can move here and there, not only agriculture produce. Well, of course, if we can get agriculture articulated that will be better. There are a lot of agriculture products coming into the North through the roads. You can see them everyday. If you stay in Lokoja here, you can count 50 trailers coming into the South. The cows, the cattle's, the tomatoes or pepper and others coming down from the north. And of course, the maize, the grains coming down from the North to the south. So if we can articulate that movement through the waters, it will be cheaper, faster and safer than having them on the highways. It will also save for us the cost of maintaining the roads. If you have to provide a road for example now from Baro to Warri, can you imagine how much it would cost. Here, we are only talking about N30 billion or N60 billion for the dredging. Can you imagine constructing a road from Baro to Warri' You will be talking of trillions of Naira. It will take collective effort of everyone ' the individual, the group, the companies, the government to change this perspective and I think it is time to realize that water transportation is cheaper. That is the thinking all over the world. We have a natural inland waterways. In some countries, especially in the United States of America, they are constructing artificial one. Almost 60 per cent of inland waterways in the U.S. are artificial.Before Nigeria's independence in 1960, the colonial masters utilized the water network in Nigeria effectively, moving goods from the North down to the South and from the south to North. Why do you think that system collapsed and how can we revive itWell, all these thing we have been talking since are ways to revive it. I think it collapsed, because the attention of the government, unfortunately, just shifted to roads transportation. Compared with roads, water transportation is cheaper. And then of course, we have to consider the volume. You see, when we talk about phenomenon in the 1960s, just directly transmit it to now, we are in 2012, there is something missing that we need to talk about now. That is the volume of the goods moved from North to South then. Its not much, I don't know the percentage of the movement. But how much more volume of goods, different types of goods or sophisticated goods as I mentioned before have been moved from the North to the south even agricultural products. Agriculture has changed, so the volume has increased, but we can improve it much more. But obviously, there is total neglect of natural endowed and cheaper means of transportation by the country in general. But I thank God that it has been realized, and whatever it is, the federal government has started to give water transportation all it takes because the inland water transportation is being revived at the local and the national levels.If the volume of goods that moved between North and South has increased compared to what we had in the colonial era, then, something is missing. Why continue to take the advantage of the increased volume to develop our water transportation'That is what we are doing now. This inland waterways department has been there in the Federal Ministry of Transport since 1950s as a department, but it was just only 1998, that they created and transformed it into an authority for a better, more purposeful approach to inland waterways transportation. From the creation, you can see the attention of the government, that there is a need to develop a viable inland waterways transportation. The authority was created to do something, which as a department you cannot do. So it is part of corporate governance. Now, slowly developed into dredging. The dredging of River Niger has been in the pipeline so to say. The idea of dredging of River Niger was first conceived during the regime of late Alhaji Tafawa Balewa. It was the report that favoured the dredging of River Niger then that suggested construction of all these dams: the Kainji Dam, and three or four other dams along River Niger. Since then, subsequent governments have been making efforts to dredge the river until this time. I think we can proudly say, as an authority, that we are like a baby of the government. The Federal Government has given us all what we need to continue with the development of this inland waterways transportations since when I come to NIWA, NIWA has been able to accessed almost all its funds more than any parastatals or MDGs and it is due to the attention being given to inland water transport by the Federal Government that inspired us to do better and improve inland waterways transport business. This morning, we singed a contract worth about N9 billion all in the effort to develop the inland waterways transportation.Since NIWA was established, we have not had a blue-print for the development of the Inland Waterways transportation in Nigeria. There has not been any policy direction for the government to really implement. What is NIWA doing because inland waterways transportation is as important as any other mode of transportation in NigeriaIn 2007 or 2008, I can't remember exactly, the government commissioned Royal Haskony, an international company to proposed an inland waterways Masterplan for Nigeria. They submitted that report in 2011. Now, recently, the Minister of Transport set up a committee of experts, drawn from various fields and various strata of the society, those who knows about something that has to do with inland waterway transportation, to study that masterplan and other phenomenon in that report. They just submitted their report about a week or two weeks ago with the intention of articulating that master plan and forward it to the Federal Executive Council for consideration. Of course, a master plan has already been presented to the national transport council. So with this inland waterways committee, the ministry of transport now articulate the proposal of this inland waterways masterplan and presented it to the Federal Executive Council. The master plan, I can just explain to you generally, what it is' It has to do with the inland waterways transportation, identify modal centres in inland waterways transportation where we can now integrate inland waterway transportation with other modes of transportation, like railway, aviation and road transportation.We have at least about 20 states that can be connected by water and we have been talking about dredging of River Niger upon which huge sum was spent. After one year, the river is still lying fallow due to low utilization. What is your Authority doing, at least, to promote the facility that you have provided and to make sure that people are aware of the new transport corridor that is available'As I said, what we have started doing is part of it. We are trying now to articulate our website so that people can access it. We will soon bring it out the website which will explain everything we are talking to those who are five years old or 10 years old, those who goes to school and start learning about River Niger and River Benue. So you don't need to tell anybody about it. By the time they reach 15 years or 20 years old, they will know that there is River Niger and River Benue that link up with the sea. So what more do you need. That is already established in our culture in Nigeria. So, what we need now is to really begin to establish the business. We need to assure the business community that this has come to stay. And what we are going to do is that after this maintenance dredging, we are arranging right now with some business and some engineering companies to work out a sustainable programme. If we can work out with the business community now and make them to believe that this channel has come to stay, they will be ready to commit their money. Because they have to start all over again, buy new facilities for this. Inland transport company (NBTC), they are ready to work with US. They have already established a transport company. If we can assure Ekene dili Chukwu, for instance, and say here we have a water that is navigable 12 months in a year, you can bring passengers from Onitsha to Lokoja, they will be ready to commit their money. That is what we are doing now. We are working on this channel management.
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