Importers’ efforts to take delivery of their consignments from Nigeria’s two major seaports, Apapa and Tin-Can Island, before the Christmas holiday are yielding little fruit following the return of gridlock in and out of the Ijora-Apapa/Wharf Road, the only access into the ports.
As a result, the cost of moving cleared containerised goods from the ports has also hit the roofs. Truck owners recently doubled the transportation fare in order to mitigate effect of the man-hour lost in accessing Apapa and also departing either of the ports with laden cargo.
“The port system is drifting to a halt such that not much will be achieved this festive period as a result of the unsolved traffic gridlock in and outward the ports including Tin-Can Port. Port operation is failing daily. So, the Christmas rush is nipped in the bud due to the traffic,” Jonathan Nicol, president, Shippers Association of Lagos State, told BusinessDay in a telephone interview.
This is happening four months after importers heaved a sigh of relief following the slight improvement in traffic situation around the Apapa port city, a situation that reduced the cost of moving laden containers out of seaports to importers’ warehouses both within and outside Lagos.
When BusinessDay visited the port, it was discovered that there was a long queue of trucks and trailers on the port roads, thus impeding movement of vehicles in and out of Apapa.
Due to the traffic situation, trucks hardly move 250 containers daily from the Apapa main port. It was also estimated that only about 200 containers exit terminals in Tin-Can Port while 150 containers exit from Port and Terminal Multiservices Ltd (PTML).
Nicol said the cost of transportation from Apapa to warehouses in places like International Trade Fair now stands at N750,000, Ikeja N850,000, and Victoria Island N650,000.
Before now, the cost of transporting one by 40-foot container within Lagos reduced to N300,000- N400,000, while one by 20-foot container dropped to N250,000-N230,000.
He stated that containers are trapped in the port due to inaccessibility of trucks, adding that the situation makes it difficult for laden containers with Christmas goods to be cleared to meet high demand that comes with Christmas and New Year celebrations.
According to him, importers are losing an average of “N80 billion a day” to high cost of doing business associated with payment of demurrage and storage charges to shipping companies and terminal operators.
“It has not been good for the maritime industry in recent times. The environment is not conducive for normal business. Operators are working under very stressful and abnormal conditions. Cargo is much in the ports today but importers cannot access their cargoes,” he said.
Nicol said the situation with evacuation of cargo from the port has deteriorated so badly that it now calls for total restructuring of the administration of government agencies responsible for building infrastructure.
In addition to the persistent gridlock and high demand that comes with yuletide rush, the truckers also blamed the palliative works on the Tin-Can, Coconut and Mile 2 stretch of the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway as another reason truckers had to increase cost.
Inuwa Abdullahi, vice chairman, dry cargo section, Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), said the palliative work has forced most truckers to relocate their vehicles to other industrial areas in Lagos, thereby creating a bit of scarcity of trucks to lift cargo from the port.
He called on the Federal Government to mandate the construction company to use the festive season to redouble its effort in fixing the road before resumption of business in the new year.
Adekunle Oyinloye, group managing director of SIFAX, parent company of Ports and Cargo Handling Services Ltd, a terminal operator at Tin-Can Port, said recently at the commissioning of the newly acquired cargo handling equipment that the poor state of the port access roads in Lagos and persistent gridlock have been critical setbacks in their operations.
“We are hoping that access into the port would improve because port efficiency and turnaround can only improve if government helps to improve the state of the roads around the port,” he said.
He commended the government for the ongoing road construction but called for more sustainable solution of linking the ports with a functional rail system to complement the road infrastructure.
Freight forwarders that are doing business at the port recently gave the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) 21-day ultimatum to solve the traffic problem.
But Nicol, who blamed the Federal Government through the Ministry of Works for neglecting the port road, said it was not in the hands of NPA to resolve the road situation.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
