Transforming Calabar Port into a viable entity

On assumption as the managing director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Bala-Usman, rolled out some key mandates. Part of it, was a rekindled effort to addressing the shortcomings of the Calabar Port.

Usman promised to dredge Calabar port, deepen its draught and enable bigger vessels with large volume of business to access the port.

To achieve this, NPA in 2017 budget, allocated N20 billion to carrying out capital dredging of Calabar channel and maintenance dredging of Bonny channel. This is in addition to billions of naira allocated in the past for dredging of Calabar channels, without making headway.

Statistics shows that business activities at Calabar Port has been at its lowest ebb for over many years due to the shallow draught of the channel that restrict access to smaller vessels and barges. This led the NPA to enter into joint venture agreements with the Calabar Channel Management Company Limited in 2014, to dredge the channel, which was originally 6 meters to 10 meters draught.

Beyond dredging, Calabar Port has a big problem, which has to do with the locating the port in a place that does not have the natural attributes of a seaport.

The port has 120 kilometres of high sea meandering channel that makes dredging difficult such that dredging this month with $100 million, in six months, NPA will need to dredge it again with same funds. This makes Calabar to lack economic viability that would encourage NPA to keep investing billions of naira generated from Ports in Lagos, to dredge the Calabar channel.

This means that it is not economically viable to get 10 metres draught in Calabar and maintain it consistently. Though, this was possible in the pre-concession era when NPA was the master stevedore in charge of cargo handling at ports, but today there are terminal operators.

In Nigeria, every project must have some level of politicking around it. This is because building the Calabar Port was surrounded with very powerful politics that made the then government to move the port, which was initially designed for Oron in Akwa Ibom State to Calabar and this was part of the reasons why we are paying for it today.

It is a wrong business model to use the revenue generated from Apapa port to develop Calabar port, which is not economically viable. Therefore, the money made in Apapa, needs to be put back into the Apapa Port to enable it work effectively.

Therefore, to solve the problem of Calabar Port, government should consider turning Calabar into an industrial port where lots of manufacturing, value addition and production can take place like we have in Free Trade Zones. Here, companies located in the industrial port can be using barges and smaller vessels to move cargo in and out of the port. It is better for industries that are into fabrication and manufacturing to use it and their export products can be moved using smaller vessels to big ports in Lagos for onward transmission.