• Friday, March 29, 2024
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BusinessDay

Multiple security checkpoints pile costs on port businesses

Port businesses

Port businesses are bearing the brunt of multiple checkpoints mounted by security operatives along the roads leading to Apapa and Tin-Can Island Ports, Nigeria’s major economic gateways.

The massive extortion of truck and tanker drivers by officers of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Nigerian Navy, Nigerian Police Force (NPF), Nigerian Army and other security operatives along the port roads and the delay arising therefrom are weighing heavily on port businesses, adding significantly to the cost of doing business at the ports.
Security operatives were originally stationed on the port roads by government to ensure sanity through proper control of traffic within Apapa metropolis, but that objective is becoming defeated as these officers now seize the opportunity to feather their nest.

“Today, we have empty container truck checkpoints where an importer that discharges his or her container will be made to pay dearly before the empty container would be allowed into the port,” Tony Anakebe, managing director, Gold-Link Investment Ltd, told BusinessDay in an interview.

“These checkpoints are sometimes more than 15 in number on one stretch of road. From Mile 2 to Apapa, we have over 15 checkpoints while from Western Avenue to Apapa has more than 10 checkpoints, and the truck driver must drop something before crossing the checkpoints,” Anakebe said.

BusinessDay findings show that truckers are compelled to pay a minimum of N10,000 per truck before they are allowed access into the ports, while those who hesitate to pay are detained on the already choked roads. All the monies so collected are not accounted for.

Though the amount paid to the operatives depends on a trucker’s negotiating power, according to Remi Ogungbemi, chairman, Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), truckers pay as much as N80,000-N120,000 per truck on a single trip to the port.

The presence of these checkpoints contributes to delay in cargo clearance and movement of goods out of the ports. This, invariably, results in longer cargo dwell time at the port, piling more costs on importers who have to pay demurrage and rent charges to both shipping companies and terminal operators.

Collection of illegal fees by government agencies and existence of multiple checkpoints are major inhibitions to smooth trade across borders, according to a survey conducted in 2018 by the Task Force on ECOWAS Trade Liberalisation Scheme (ETLS) on doing business in Nigeria.

The ETLS survey further revealed that civilians usually manage these checkpoints as the point men used in extorting and collecting ransom from truck drivers.

“This is not helping businesses because it is one of the reasons truck drivers charge importers as high as N700,000 to N800,000 to move one 40-foot container from Apapa to warehouses in Lagos. It is now very exorbitant to transport goods out of the port,” Anakebe told BusinessDay.

“Corruption will continue to thrive in our ports if these checkpoints are allowed to stay. It has become very absurd that when a Custom officer releases a container in Apapa, on getting to Area B, which is few metres away, the truck driver will encounter more than three Customs’ checkpoints and the cargo owner must grease their palm before passing,” he said.

Beyond the corruption facilitated by the presence of the multiple checkpoints, truckers are also subjected to all manner of dehumanising treatments by officers of the agencies, said Ogungbemi.

“The drivers on the queues are subjected to brutalisation and dehumanisation by security operatives. We appeal to government to provide a place to serve as truck terminal at truckers’ expense and for only trucks that are already booked to load in the ports,” he said.

He urged the shipping companies to provide adequate functional holding-bays for receiving their empty containers in order to reduce the number of trucks on the roads.

AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE