In line with its promises of facilitating Ease of Doing Business at the nation’s seaports, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has finally opened former Lilypond Container Terminal to truckers to use as a temporary park, away from roads and bridges to Apapa.
BusinessDay understands the NPA management unveiled Lilypond trailer/truck Transit Park on Friday to aid Ease of Doing Business within the ports community in order to entrench greater operational service efficiency at ports.
With this development, APM Terminals which formerly operated the terminal as off-dock facility for containers under a concession agreement that elapsed few years, may have lost the hope to continue managing the terminal in the future.
Converting Lilypond Terminal to Transit Park was part of the NPA’s efforts to address issues around the notorious Apapa traffic by taking trucks off the roads and bridges leading to Apapa port city.
The terminal will be solely reserved for trucks that have business in Apapa port and have obtained call-up to be in the port to pick containers.
When BusinessDay visited the Terminal on Monday, it was discovered that several trucks were already parked on the terminal while a few were sited on the Ijora Bridge trying to gain access into the Lilypond terminal. This also recorded positive impact on traffic into Apapa port city.
Meanwhile, to facilitate trade in our ports, Iheanacho Ebubeogu, general manager, Security of the NPA, called for a review of the laws establishing the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) with a view to improving its performance, especially in the area of trade facilitation.
Speaking at a forum in Lagos recently, Ebubeogu stated that the laws, which currently guide the operation of Customs, do not allow its personnel to strike the right balance between enforcement and trade facilitation.
“Our Customs laws do not allow the officers to strike the right balance and if we don’t strike the right balance, there is no way we can facilitate trade. If we don’t facilitate trade and we are going into signing MoUs of trade liberalisation, we may have the market but this market will be accessed by others,” he said.
Ebubeogu advised Customs to discontinue practice of setting revenue targets for its Commands, stating that government over the years has not proven to be a good manager of taxpayer’s money.
“Customs should not be in a hurry to tell Nigerians what their target is. There are things we can let go so that on the other side of the equation, we will provide employment and socio-economic services. I think we should be applying optimisation theory now, otherwise we take up money and give to government while the government in Nigeria whether we like it or not, has not proven to be best managers of our tax,” he said.
Speaking on why Nigerian seaports are no longer transit corridors for goods heading to landlocked countries in West Africa, Ebubeogu said Nigeria is still backward due to poor port infrastructure, including good roads and security.
“Even if our roads are good, it is not enough to have the roads, we must complement that with security because if we want to transit cargoes to these landlocked countries, it has to be by rail or by road,” he added.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
