It is strange that unlike other "talkshows" before it, the recent two-day workshop on ports privatisation did not come up with any agreements in the form of a communique. Curiously, it is the second ports privatisation-related gathering with a similar profile. Although, for two days last month, major stakeholders, heads of related government parastatals and the two house unions in the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) were invited to Port Harcourt by the duo of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and the Senate Committee on Marine Transport, the workshop ended without any catalogue of agreements.

Prior to the Port Harcourt jaw jaw session, a sensitisation workshop on the same controversial port privatisation concept had taken place in Lagos late last year. It also ended with a controversial communique. The workers under the auspices of both the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) and the Senior Staff Association (SSA) had openly accused the organizers of smuggling some controversial submission (especially the ones which favour ports privatisation) into the communique.

They had also raised alarm that their views and opposition to ports privatisation were not reflected in the draft communique which was presented at the end of the seminar. They insisted that the workers viewpoint (even through unpalatable to the apostles of ports privatisation) must be reflected. Perhaps, sensing trouble from the already apprehensive workforce, the organisers simply pocketed the communique after an amended version was reluctantly presented at the closing ceremony. Nobody has set eyes on it since then.

But the Port Harcourt workshop which was also expected to come up with some agreements (especially given the volatile nature of the issue at stake) ended only with a closing prayer! And of course a remark and that was it. Undoubtedly, three issues emanated from the workshop and for these MWUN and the SSA have expressed doubt and sensed conspiracy. First- the government has opted for concessioning. Second - the "host states" are angling for a piece of the ports privatisation pie and thirdly - the legal hurdles are very high but imperative.

Although acknowledging that "the essence of the workshop was to obtain inputs of all stakeholders, regarding the most appropriate mode of reforming the Nigerian ports", deputy director at the BPE and head of port sector reform Alhaji Hassan Usman, however, in another tone had declared that the privatisation scheduled for this year will be via concessioning.

Sounding rather authoritative, the BPE top man who is going to play a more visible role in the controversial ports privatisation had gone ahead to reel out a seven step time table for actualisation of the plan which according to him would culminate in the concessioning of at least one port by December 2002.

Under the BPE's "transition" programme, by the end of this month a Dutch consultancy team led by Messrs Haskoning Consultants would have submitted a report on options available to the government. By May, a team of Due Diligence Advisers is expected to be appointed while a new transport policy is expected to have been put in place by the end of June.

According to Usman the second important step would be the appointment of privatisation advisers in June while it would be the turn of the elite Transport Sector Reform Committee (TSRC), the highly powerful National Council on Privatisation (NCP) headed by Vice President Atiku Abubakar and lastly the Federal Executive Council to consider the draft of the new Port Act. The existing Port Act of 1951 and other laws on NPA must be reviewed before ports privatisation can be legalised.

Also, it was the Governor of River State, Dr. Peter Odili who seized the occasion of the workshop to drop a hint. He declared the intention of states in which such ports are located to be given "rights of first offer", that is the states are also angling for equity in the proposed invitation to the private sector.

The states are Rivers which hosts Port Harcourt and Onne Port, Cross River (Calabar Port), Delta (Warri, Burute and Koko Ports), and of course Lagos which houses Apapa, Tin Can Island RORO and Container Terminal Ports). But, president-general, MWUN, Comrade Onikolaese Irabor traced the genesis of the workers mistrust and apprehension to the manner in which the TSRC report on ports privatisation was jettisoned by the government apparently because the report did not favour privatisation.

He was joined by the secretary-general of the SSA, Comrade Peter Abolarin who maintained that there is no sincerity in the manner in which the exercise was being pursued. But more specifically, the MWUN president general disclosed that the workers were rigmarole into accepting private sector participation in Port Harcourt. "The Port Harcourt workshop was a political jamboree, we were being cajoled, we did not accept private sector participation and we did not accept concessioning," Irabor told Champion Transport.

According to him, the workers participated in the workshop because they thought that they organisers were sincere only to discover that the had made up their mind and even drawn up a timetable on privatisation. Irabor pointedly told Champion Transport that the workers have dissociated themselves from the "so-called" agreement on private sector privatisation and that the opposition to ports privatisation was irrevocable.

On his part, the SSA scribe expressed optimism that the hurdle which the apostles of ports privatisation may find very difficult to scale is enactment of a new Port Act. It is illegal to privatise NPA at the moment because the subsisting legislations do not accommodate that possibility, he reiterated.

Abolarin's conviction may have stemmed from the submission of the chairman, Senate Committee on Marine Transport, Senator I. S. Martyns Yellowe who openly submitted that as it is the NPA has been slated for full commercialization by the BPE Act. According to him, "under the existing laws the NPA is expected to enjoy full autonomy...." He however pointed out that under existing NPA laws, concessioning of certain aspects of ports operation is allowed.

"To resolve this seeming conflict it is necessary to amend the BPE law to bring it in conformity with the provisions of NPA law as amended", he stated even as he dropped the bombshell that unless this is done "the BPE can not be deemed competent to privatise the NPA whatever privitisation may mean". For now, the two house unions are reportedly restrategising even as they have intensified their lobby at the National Assembly.