Excruciating gridlock on the roads leading to Apapa and Tin-Can Island Ports in Lagos in 2019 made it almost impossible for cargo owners to take delivery of their goods. The unbearable traffic situation piled cost on shippers.
Truckers striving to gain access into the ports were extorted by security operatives manning the access roads. All of these combined to impede the growth of port business in 2019.
The efficiency of port operation was also hampered by the presence over 5,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of overtime and abandoned containers as well as over 1,179 used vehicles (including scraps and movable vehicles) at the port terminals located in Apapa, Tin-Can Island and Onne Ports.
Given the persistent traffic situation, the cost of moving cleared containers from the port increased in the period under review as truck owners doubled the transportation fare in order to recoup what was lost to several hours of gridlock to and fro Apapa.
Manual cargo examination was another obstacle to efficient port operation in 2019, according to Vicky Haastrup, chairman, Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN).
“The scanners at the port are not working, while almost all the cargoes landed at our ports were subjected to 100 percent physical examination,” Haastrup said. “This certainly slows down the cargo delivery process and increases the cost of doing business. We urge the Federal Government to, as a matter of urgency, work on automating Customs processes at our ports and install functional scanners to reduce manual clearing processes.”
Haastrup said automation and scanning would reduce human contacts at the port and cut down on the use of discretionary powers by government officials, which will in turn reduce the cost of doing business at the port and increase government revenue.
“Port operators and users are groaning under severe stress posed by severely dilapidated port access roads. While terminal operations at all the ports have attained varying degrees of efficiency, the dilapidated roads leading into and out of the ports, are fast eroding the gains of the port reforms,” she said. Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director, Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), had at different forums said the ports have been heavily congested due to the presence of overtime cargoes. This, she said, impedes efficiency of operation and timely release of cargo.
For Nigeria to optimise the benefit of closing the land borders by the Federal Government, Usman noted that there was need to decongest the seaports by removing the overtime cargoes that hamper the capacity and efficiency of the seaports.
“We have noted that a lot of containers have been abandoned by consignees and our terminals are overflowing with overtime cargoes,” she said.
Tony Anakebe, managing director of Gold-Link Investment Ltd, blamed Nigeria’s inability to manage the success of border closure for the congestion in the port as several ships anchored on Nigerian waters find it difficult to berth due to lack of space.
“Several terminals are filled to the brim and demurrages are being paid by importers. We are having congestion and trucks stay on queue for days just to load laden containers,” Anakebe said.
“Last week, 20-foot container was loaded with N1.2 million from Tin-Can Island Port to Ajao-Estate in Lagos while 40-foot container cost as much as N1.4 million. This hike in transportation cost was due to the traffic congestion on the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway,” he said.
He said the management of traffic on the port roads has been zero to nothing such that it has become the den of corruption and money-spinner for security agencies that feed fat from the chaos.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
