NRC to decongest EBJ container traffic

The Lagos district of the Nigerian Railway Corporation said it is working closely with the Lagos state government and trailer owners to identify some of the causes of long queues of trailer waiting to pick up containers brought by train from the Apapa port to the Ebutte Metta Junction (NRC) stacking facility of NRC for onward delivery by trucks to other parts of the country.

Jerry Oche, the Lagos Railway District Manager disclosed that, at the moment, NRC said that in terms of container examination, it depends on the type of containers involved.

For imports, the container examinations are carried out at the imports, while it is only bonded containers that, the Customs follow and do the examination at the destination, while for unbounded, examination is carried out at the originating port. There are Customs bonded warehouses in Kaduna and Kano.

Oche said for the unbounded containers at EBJ, such examination is done at the terminal before it is pulled out. He said, on the average, the NRC do one or two trips a day. For those that are not bonded, the destinations are Ajuba depot, EBJ, Ijoko, Ogun State and Omi Adio in Oyo State which was started recently.

The Nigeria Railways also has exports from Ijoko, EBJ and Ajuba going into the seaport. Those ones are to be inspected at the port and shipped out and some of which are agricultural products and metals.

We also do fertiliser and animal feeds up-north to Minna and to Kaduna and of recent we started doing fertiliser from the north. When we send fertiliser, some of the wagons com back with animal feeds.

The RDM said the movement of pipes out of the port has been on for about three months now, as the NRC has only moved half of what was shipped into the country.

MIKE OCHONMA