Time for functional Apapa freight rail service

Apapa port accounts for 30% of cargo throughput among Nigerian seaports. Much of the cargo handled by the Apapa port is destined for different parts of the country. However, the constant traffic gridlock has become a recurring decimal for many years now due primarily to lack of  a functional freight rail service linking  the port to the hinterland .

Lagos state government has long identified six problems that are responsible for the ugly traffic situation. These are failure of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to properly manage the ports, irresponsible location of tank farms in Apapa, failure of Nigeria National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC)to properly handle fuel distribution, bad roads not fixed by Federal Ministry of Works, transporters’ indiscretion, and failure of enforcement.

The deep potholes along most parts of Apapa roads could better be described as gullies, which have now turned death traps and a major contributory factor to the unprecedented grid lock that daily occurs on the roads.

The location of tank farms along that corridor, which results in hundreds of trucks calling to load products and parking indiscriminately, compounds the bad situation caused by dilapidated roads. It is estimated that 56 tank farms are located in Lagos State alone, out of which 35 are located along Kirikiri town, Trinity junction axis along the Wharf/Tin can road. The indiscriminate location of tank farms in Nigeria is said to be a complete departure from what obtains in other economies where tank farms are located far from the commercial zones and highly populated areas.

Perennial traffic gridlock that now characterizes Apapa, where two of the nation’s busiest seaports are located—Tin Can Island Port and the Lagos Ports Complex—, has continued to be sore point in the country’s logistics chain. Sadly, roads in the area where tank farms are concentrated are most dilapidated causing extreme inconvenience to residents, tanker drivers and other road users.

We recall that in August 2013, the Jonathan Administration responded by reviving container evacuation by rail from the Apapa Container Terminal in the Lagos Ports Complex (LPC). The excitement that greeted this move has since  in August 2013 has waned.  Nearly two years after, the train service from the port has remained epileptic, with one trip of less than 20 containers hardly achieved on weekly basis.

Industry watchers say this development to a very large extent defeats the President Goodluck Jonathan’s transformational  agenda in the rail sector especially when the Federal Ministry of Transport through the Nigerian Railway Corporation set an optimistic target of achieving up to three trips of 20 containers per week.

Other stakeholders point to several factors, including inadequate locomotives and wagons which combine to deprive importers, especially in the Northern part of Nigeria, the excitement and convenience of receiving their cargoes by train.

We believe that a regular commercial freight rail service linking Apapa port to the hinterland has become an urgent necessity. Major problems affecting freight traffic include inadequate cargo handling plants and equipment, long turnaround time, cargo pilferage and excessive charges. The recent port reforms are expected to increase private sector participation and operational efficiency at the ports.

We expect the in-coming Buhari Administration to prioritize sanitization of port administration, fuel distribution and repair of federal roads inApapa and environs as part of measures to revive the Nigerian economy. This is because, it is clear to us that the Jonathan Administration has failed to make a success of its port reforms. The Appa   gridlock is one of the harvests of such failure.

The Apapa port is responsible for highest internally generated revenue for the Federal Government after petroleum. The Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) has been reporting over N100 billion monthly revenue from duty and levy since the beginning of 2014, according to the NCS Comptroller General. We believe that this revenue can be doubled or tripled when there is a working commercial rail service linking other parts of the country to the Apapa port.