Movement of laden and empty containers in and out of the Tin-Can Island Port, Nigeria’s second busiest seaport, in Lagos has become a hard nut to crack following increasing rent-seeking and extortion by traffic managers along the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway.
Terminals in Tin-Can Ports can no longer record 100 percent efficiency as the never-ending gridlock on the access road, which makes movement of trucks almost impossible, has made it tough to gate out laden containers and gate in empties.
BusinessDay gathered that several goods imported to meet Christmas sales are trapped in Tin-Can Port while cargo owners, on the other hand, pay through their nose to hire trucks to move their goods out of the port because truckers, who have been forced by the prevailing situation to do one job in one month and also pay their way into the port, are charging higher to recover the loss on the road.
Jonathan Nicol, president, Shippers Association of Lagos State, who disclosed that containers are trapped in Tin-Can due to inability of trucks to access the port, estimated that less than 200 containers currently exit terminals in Tin-Can Port daily compared to about 700 containers prior to this time.
Clearing agents and truckers blamed the situation on multiple checkpoints as well as increasing rate of extortion on the road by security operatives deployed to manage traffic. Today, truckers pay N70,000-N200,000 as gratification to different layers of officials to access the port.
Also, there are empty container truck checkpoints where importers who discharge their containers would be made to pay to security officials before their empty containers would be allowed into the port.
For instance, there are more than 15 checkpoints from Mile 2 to Tin-Can, while from Western Avenue to Apapa has more than 10 checkpoints. At every checkpoint, truckers are compelled to part with money before they are allowed to cross.
Confirming this, Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director, Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), said in an interview with Arise TV on The Morning Show last Thursday that there is a lot of rent-seeking around traffic management in Apapa, where all manners of payments are made to security officials for trucks to access the port.
She said the port currently has manual call-up system that has NPA security officials, Presidential Task Team, Nigerian Police Force, and LASTMA physically involved in the management and deciding the trucks to access the ports.
“I will never say that our own staffs are not part of that system because NPA security staff and NPA marine operation staff are all part of that manual system that involves human interference. But the introduction of electronic call-up would do away with these people, who personally decide or are given gratifications to facilitate the movement of trucks into the port,” Usman said.
“The NPA is keen to deploying an electronic call-up system as well as a designated truck parks to link them, and it would be unveiled in January. This is a way to address the huge rent-seeking that goes on around that area because we hear people are paying N1.5 million to move X foot container to Abuja and that it costs so much to move container out of the port,” she said. Kate Njoku, a clearing agent who mostly does business in Tin-Can Port, said clearing a containerised cargo from Tin-Can has become difficult and expensive for importers, especially due to the cost of haulage that has hit the roof.
“Imagine that I loaded an already released container in Ports and Cargo Terminal since last 10 days but the truck has not been able to leave the port terminal due to the gridlock from the port to the access road,” Njoku said.
“To move 40-foot container from any terminal in Tin-Can to warehouses in Lagos, the importer pays as high as over a million naira. For instance, Tin-Can to National, which is a bus-stop away, I was charged N1.2 million; to Odolowu, which is close to Ijesha, truckers charge as high as N1.4 million to lift one container,” she said.
Njoku said her friend was lucky to get a truck that was able to lift one 40-foot container of her principal from Tin-Can Port to Ibadan in Oyo State, which is also not far from Lagos, for N1.2 million.
Segun Ojo, another clearing agent, told BusinessDay that the cost of hiring a truck in Tin-Can Port became high due to the artificial gridlock created by security operatives in charge of managing traffic on that axis.
Ojo said these security operatives mount checkpoints where they extort money from truckers, and they intentionally don’t pass trucks from the road to the terminal, which is capable of keeping truckers on queue for two weeks before having access into the port.
“As we speak, many truck owners charge over N1 million to lift any container belonging to Mediterranean Shipping Company (MSC) because it has become very tough to return their empty containers to the port. Cargo owners now pay ridiculous amount as demurrage and rent to shipping companies and terminal operators due to the delay caused by the artificial gridlock on the road,” he said.
The situation, Ojo said, has become so bad because before the container would leave the port to the importer’s warehouse, the empty container would have piled up huge sums in demurrage for the importer.
Nicol of Shippers Association of Lagos State, while noting that a bit of sanity has returned to Apapa Port since manual call-up was introduced, said the situation in Tin-Can makes it difficult for laden containers with Christmas goods to be cleared to meet high demand that comes with Christmas and New Year celebrations.
He called for restructuring and disbandment of the security operatives responsible for managing traffic on the roads.
