Lagos ports’ congestion requires holistic solution

The
revival of the eastern ports in Nigeria has become a high necessity to
decongest the two major ones in the commercial nerve centre, Lagos, and
free the roads.

The
perennial traffic gridlock on the Apapa-Oshodi expressway as a result
of heavy vehicular movement to Nigeria’s two busiest ports -Lagos port
complex and
Tin Can Island port – in Lagos requires an urgent and holistic
solution.

Efforts
of the government in the past, especially the combined forces of the
federal and Lagos State governments to decongest the Apapa roads in
recent times
have not yielded the anticipated result.

They have only been palliative measures, which have not addressed the problem.

For
almost two decades, the chaos on the roads where tankers and
articulated vehicles block the highways and turn the bridges to their
parking lots has been
going on, thereby exerting undue pressure on the roads and constituting
dangers to other road users and properties.

Lagos
state governor Akinwunmi Ambode, recently called on the federal
government to revive other ports in the eastward parts of the country to
enable them take
some of the load off Lagos and make life in the nation’s commercial
capital more bearable for the residents.

Nigeria has six seaports –
 Apapa Port, Tin Can Island Port, Port Harcourt Port (or
Rivers Port), Onne Port (also in Rivers State), Calabar Port and Warri
Port (or Delta Port).

Unfortunately,
the ports in Onne in Rivers State, Warri in Delta State and Calabar in
Cross River State, among others, have remained grossly under-utilised.

Apapa and Tin Can ports now account for 75 to 80 per cent of shipping activities, serving an estimated 200 million population.

Onne
Port is largely used for oil and gas related cargoes, which underscores
the extent of its usage even though its use is not maximised as well.

Notably, ships and importers have not been making use of the eastern ports because the water channels are narrow and shallow.

The
standard depth required for very large vessels or containers-carrying
vessels to berth is between 18 metres and 19 metres, which is actually
for deep seaports.

At the moment, Nigeria does not have any deep seaport; all the ones available are river ports.

The first deep seaport in the country is the Lekki deep seaport that is currently under construction.

The
draft of the Apapa and Tin Can Island ports is between 14 metres and
14.5 metres, which is why large vessels berth at the two ports
comfortably.

In
fact, some container-carrying vessels do not need more than 12 metres
to 13.5 metres. However, at the moment, the draft of the Warri Port is
about 7 metres,
that of Calabar Port is about 6 metres while Rivers Port also has about
8 metres; all of which are lower than what container-carrying vessels
need to berth. The area is also battling with the challenge of
insecurity due the activities of pirates.

However,
we believe that these challenges are not insurmountable. The government
only needs to exercise its political will to dredge the channels and
improve
the level of maritime security in that part of the country.

It
makes no economic sense that goods are cleared in Lagos and trucked by
road to Onitsha, Aba, Port Harcourt, Enugu, Nnewi and other cities
within the old eastern
region, whereas ports closer to these cities are idle and rotting away.

The
first consequence is that it increases the cost of doing business, with
the final consumers paying through their noses to access goods and
services through
the value chain. Another is the damage caused our road infrastructure
by heavy duty trucks conveying goods along that axis.

The
volume of cargoes and shipping activities have increased over the
decades but infrastructure within the ports have not seen any
significant expansion, hence
inspection and clearing of goods are slow, resulting in thousands of
trucks making their way to ports being held down on the roads.

The
spillover from the Apapa ports can be accommodated at ports in Rivers,
Cross Rivers, Delta and other states if those ports are revived and made
to function
optimally.

The
federal authorities need to do everything within their powers to revive
existing ports in other states to end the perennial traffic congestion
in Apapa.
It is bad that we still use trucks to lift petroleum products from
Apapa to other parts of the country.

 The
concentration of cargo import on Apapa ports negates the ease-of-doing
business. It is our considered opinion
that other ports in Nigeria should begin to work immediately to
decongest the gridlock in Lagos and rein in the heavy toll on the
country’s roads caused by artificial vehicles.