Exactly four years ago, the political atmosphere in Nigeria was as charged as it is today. Politicians were afoot, as they are today, selling themselves to the electorate, telling them how they would make all seemingly impossible things possible. And Apapa was one of their ready campaign tools.
Apapa is Nigeria’s premier port city. It has two very busy seaports—Apapa and Tin Can—which account for about 75 percent of all export and import activities in the country. Apapa’s economy is valued at N20 billion a day, making it the highest business hub in Nigeria.
Amidst these potentials, the port city has remained in a sorry state with choking congestion, gridlock and decaying infrastructure. Politicians told residents and businesses in those days that the only solution to these problems was in voting out the sitting government because, according to them, fixing Apapa and making it work was not “rocket science”. Four years on, Apapa story has changed from bad to worse with the rot deepening and widening.
Today, this city is as good as ‘dead’. It has lost its soul as desperate businessmen who care for the golden egg and little or nothing about the hen have taken over. Mindlessly, they exploit the resources of the city and leave nothing for the remediation of the environment they have degraded, no compensation for destroyed investments and no recompense for the deprived, dispossessed and dehumanized residents.
Apapa represents a city in static motion. It is a metaphor for a sleeping economy and of failed clueless government. Apapa tells the Nigeria story—a story of paradoxes and contradictions; of a glass cup half full yet half empty; and of a country cutting its nose in order to spite its face. Much of Nigeria story can only be told and heard in the theatre of the absurd.
In other jurisdictions, ports play a substantial role in the economies of metropolitan areas. In Rotterdam, for example, it is reported that port-related activities accounted for 74,000 direct jobs and 13 percent of total metropolitan GDP in 2007. One can only imagine what the figure could be today over 10 years after.
In Shanghai, the number of jobs related to port activities reached 840,000 in 2012, up from 347,000 in 2002. Shanghai’s port accounted for 7.6 percent of the city’s GDP in 2012.
This cannot be said of Nigeria where activities around Apapa ports have forced many residents and businesses out of the port city. Many buildings are empty and depreciating in value with the attendant loss in rental income. Rather than creating jobs, many jobs are being lost in Apapa almost on daily basis because businesses die or relocate to saner environments.
Perhaps, a few samplers can suffice. Property value in Apapa has come down to a point where a buyer can easily get 2,500 square metres of land for as ‘low’ as N150 million and according to Uche Chiejina, an estate manager, house rents have also dropped significantly from N5 million per annum two years ago to between N3 million N2.5 million per annum. “And that is if you see tenants”, he said.
It is estimated that 40 percent of the entire buildings in the Apapa GRA are empty. On the average, 10 houses are empty on any given street. With an average house rent of N5 million per annum, it means that in one street alone, income loss for the five-year period is about N250 million.
Before now, Wharf Road and Commercial Road were the ‘Central Business Districts’ in Apapa where high net worth firms and banks had their offices and branches respectively. A walk through these ‘districts’ shows that most of the banks have either relocated or have the number of their branches reduced.
On Wharf Road alone, more than 10 banks and two eateries have shut down their branches due to the pain and difficulty in accessing these branches, leading to loss of substantial customers in the area. Unity Bank, for instance, which used to have four branches, now has two, Ecobank with eight branches has reduced to four and Access Bank with seven branches also cut down to four.
Eateries like Tetrazini has shut down, Tantalizer with three outlets has reduced to one and the only Mr Biggs eatery in Apapa on Creek Road is now out of the market. Film House Cinema inside Apapa Mall has also shut down.
The point has to be made that a port by itself is no guarantee of a city’s growth but improvement in port infrastructure which should be a priority investment for the government. Like Nigeria, lack of efficiency in seaport operations was once hindering Brazil’s economic and urban growth.
But unlike Nigeria, Brazil has recognised the need to improve its port infrastructure with US$3 billion allocated to port investments under the government’s Growth Acceleration Programme, and another US$14 billion earmarked for port upgrade works to be carried out by the private sector.
Conversely, in Nigeria, spite of all the revenues that federal and state governments make from the ports, the political will is not there to invest some of this revenues in improving access roads infrastructure in and around the ports.
The Federal Government has very strong presence at the two ports with its revenue collecting agencies which collect money for it in form of import duties and levies by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS); royalties, rents and dues collected by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA); dues and levies collected by the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA); certification levies collected by the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON), among others.
In 2018, NCS collected a total sum of N1.2 trillion in revenue for the government. It also impounded a total of 5,235 seizures with duty paid value (DPV) of N61.5 billion following its anti-smuggling operations. The 2018 revenue was N164.8 billion more than that of 2017, which was N1.037 trillion.
Altogether, in the last three years, the NCS has generated about N3.1 trillion in revenue and much of these revenues come from its activities at the Apapa ports, yet government is not ready and willing to invest even 10 percent of this revenue into making Apapa what it is supposed to be as a port city.
Besides lack of political will on the part of government to invest in Apapa, vested interests which come in various forms make providing solution to Apapa very difficult if not impossible. Owners of tank farms scattered all over the port city as well as haulage operators would do everything humanly possible to keep Apapa perpetually down to their selfish advantage.
In the last 24 months, haulage cost in and around Apapa has sky-rocked. Today, transporting a 40-footer container from Lagos to Onitsha costs an importer N1.3 million, up from between N320,000 and N340,000 before the congestion in Apapa. Moving the same container from Lagos to Shagamu which before cost N120,000 to N150,000, is now N750,000 to N800,000. For an importer to move his goods from Lagos to Ilorin now costs him between N860,000 and N900,000, up from N220,000 to N260,000 he used to pay, just as transportation of same size container to Abuja now costs N1.3 million to N1.4 million, up from N420,000.
Haulage operators who enjoy these increases are said to resist anything that will change the status quo including the building of a rail track for mass movement of containers in and out of the ports.
Another major hindrance to the solution to the Apapa problem are the activities of securities agencies operating as taskforce for controlling traffic in Apapa. The allegation against these security operatives is that they are there to line their pockets and not to control traffic.
A port operator who pleaded anonymity estimates that security operatives make as much as N150 million from truck owners, given that about 3,000 trucks visiting the port weekly pay as much as N50,000 to fast track access into the port. By the last count, more than 10 checking points from Western Avenue to Apapa Port and more than 15 checking points from Mile 2 to Tin-Can Island Port manned by security operatives have been identified.
More than anything else, these checkpoints are fueling the gridlock because it is observed that truck drivers negotiate their movement and so all vehicles behind any truck whose driver is negotiating have to wait until that exercise is over and he is given a ‘pass’ after parting with a huge sum of money.
The general belief is that there is no way the Apapa gridlock will clear within the shortest possible time because of what these operatives are benefiting from the messy situation. Again, it is believed that the gridlock can only be tackled if the oil tank farms are moved out of Apapa because their continued existence means no end to the congestion and gridlock in and around Apapa.
CHUKA UROKO
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