Failure of international shipping companies doing business in Nigeria to retrieve their empty containers has been blamed for lingering congestion in port terminals and persistent traffic jam on roads leading in and out of ports in the country.
Alarmingly, nearly all roads, streets, bridges and under bridges in Lagos, especially those that have a connection with Apapa, which hosts Apapa and Tin-can Island Seaports, have been turned into parks for container-carrying trucks.
The most affected roads include Apapa-Oshodi Expressway (Cele to Mile 2 axis); Awodi Ora and Wilmer roads in Ajegunle; Kirikiri; LagosBadagry Expressway, Orile-Igamu; Second Rainbow down to Apple Junction; Ago Palace Way; Ikorodu road; Ijora; Eko Bridge and among others.
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Consequently, residents in areas like Amuwo-Odofin, Festac, Iyana-oba, Satellite Town, Ajegunle, Apapa, Surulere and many other areas in Lagos are presently losing man-hour reaching their offices, markets and homes.
Within the port terminals, there is about 90 percent yard occupancy, indicating a high rate of congestion and longer dwell time for imports. This has also elongated waiting time of vessels as ships now spend between 30 to 50 days on Nigerian waters before accessing the ports.
Jonathan Nicol, president, Shippers Association Lagos State, said terminal operators were responsible for receiving empty containers on behalf of their principals – shipping companies, which are responsible for the export of empty boxes, but lamented that shipping firms were deliberately refusing to retrieve and export their empty containers.
According to him, the refusal by these shipping companies to export empty containers has become a threat to the shipping trade in Nigeria, as it results to artificial port congestion, leaving little space for container with laden goods.
This, he said, has brought untold hardship on shippers “because when there are scanty spaces left due to deliberate refusal to evacuate empty containers, shipping lines introduce congestion charges against the shippers.”
Nicol further stated that there was over 65 percent of empty containers not fit for evacuation in Nigeria, which is probably because most of the containers have outlived their usefulness and cannot be exported.
“It is no longer news that importers have been accused of abandoning their investments in the ports and causing lack of space for imports because they refuse to clear their goods. This is not correct. We should be able to distinguish between space occupied by empty containers and space occupied by loaded containers. There are empty boxes littered in our ports and communities today,” he said.
Nicol said that communities in the port cities were littered with empty containers, which is making life difficult for the residents as it continues to breed area boys, touts and fuel crimes across cities.
