Over 5,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of overtime and abandoned containers are piled up in Apapa, Tin-Can Island and Onne Ports, jeopardising the expected gains of the Federal Government’s Ease of Doing Business policy.
Also, another 1,179 used vehicles including scraps and movable vehicles are currently trapped at the port terminals located in Lagos.
Overtime cargoes are containers, vehicles and other kinds of imports that have spent up to 90 days (three months) and more in the port without the owners claiming them. Nigerian ports today harbour many containers and vehicles that have spent between 90 and 4,000 days.
Given the development, vessels with laden containers, which ordinarily should seamlessly discharge their consignments without delay, are beginning to wait for days to gain access into the ports to berth.
Apart from slowing ship turnaround time, the situation has also succeeded in stalling the 48-hour cargo clearance policy of the Federal Government and has also impacted negatively on the volume of cargoes that can be handled in Onne and Apapa Ports.
BusinessDay findings show that over 80 percent of overtime cargoes at the nation’s ports are owned by government agencies involved in various kinds of projects, like independent power and infrastructure projects, across the country.
In Onne Container Terminal, Nigeria’s third-busiest seaport after Apapa and Tin-Can Island Ports, ships now stay more than 10 days before they can have access into Onne port to discharge laden containers due to lack of space to discharge vessels.
Funmilayo Olotu, port manager of Lagos Port Complex (LPC), said at a recent stakeholders’ meeting in Apapa that the piling up of overtime cargoes has been one of the major challenges facing users of port services.
“We are recording high volume of overtime cargoes such that at APM Terminals alone, the number of overtime containers presently stands at 2,259 boxes, which is about 3,000 TEUs,” she said.
She said that ENL terminal now has longer cargo dwell time because of the project cargoes for the Lekki Deep Seaport that are yet to be evacuated from the port.
According to her, if the terminal is occupied with a high volume of overtime and abandoned containers, it would be difficult for boxes in laden vessels to be stacked at the terminal.
Al-Hassan Ismaila, port manager, Onne Port, said the West African Container Terminal (WACT), operator of the port, reported that it had to convert part of its car parks and examination bay to stacking areas in order to accommodate laden containers.
He said berth occupancy at WACT terminal stands at 90 percent, showing ‘lack of space’ for vessels with laden containers to come in and discharge.
“WACT in Onne presently has about 1,500 containers that have been examined but are yet to be taken out by the owners. There is a limit to which the terminal operator can be able to accommodate this overflow,” Ismaila said.
According to him, over 30 percent of the stacking spaces in the terminal are occupied by overtime containers.
He, however, called on the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and freight forwarders to come to terms with what should be done to address the issue of congestion caused by abandoned and overtime cargoes in Onne Port.
Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director of the NPA, who spoke on the issue at different stakeholders’ engagements, said the ports have been heavily congested due to the presence of overtime cargoes, and this does not make for efficiency of operation and timely release of cargo.
For Nigeria to optimise the benefit of closing the land borders by the Federal Government, Usman said, there is need to decongest the seaports by removing the overtime cargo that seem to 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. People abandon their containers because they do not want their consignment to be subjected to 100 percent physical examination,” she said.
Usman said the NPA was taking up the issues to ensure that Nigerian ports are competitive, by having the required turnaround time for vessels.
She said terminal operators and Customs must be ready to bend over backwards to make concessions that would lead to the clearing of the overtime goods.
“All parties must be willing to make concessions to see that these goods are removed from the ports. NPA is currently seeking ways to raise the huge funds to cater for the logistics for the transfer of the abandoned goods to Ikorodu Lighter Terminal. We might need to approach the National Assembly for a budget virement, but we are being careful not to expose the government unnecessarily,” she said.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
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