Apapa gridlock highlights need for increased transport infrastructure

Research has shown that Nigeria has in recent times grown the port infrastructure in most of the notable terminals in the country since the terminal operators took over cargo handling operations from the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA).

This has, however, resulted to an average annual growth of 10 percent in the volume of cargo handled in the ports without a corresponding growth in the volume of transport infrastructure within and outside the port environment.

For instance, in the pre-concession era, the Apapa Container Terminal handled an average of 250,000 twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs) of containers annually, but today the volume has grown to an average of 630,000 TEUs yearly.

This has also increased the number of trucks that take delivery of consignment from the port on daily basis. Today, an average of 700 trucks take delivery of cargo every day at the Apapa Container Terminal, with another 800 trucks returning empty containers, making a total of 1,500 trucks that do business at the terminal. When the number of trucks that do business at the other four terminals in Apapa is added, it would amount to over 3,000 trucks.

Furthermore, in the pre-concession days, access into the port was only through the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway and the Ijora-Apapa Road. Today, despite the overwhelming growth, these two major roads remain the only access into Apapa. Alarmingly, the aforementioned roads have at the moment so deteriorated due to over-usage by increased volume from the ports as well as the increased volume from the oil tank farms that have sprouted everywhere within the Apapa city in recent times.

Supporting this school of thought, Emma Nwabu, a clearing and forwarding practitioner, says both the federal and state government need to take responsibility of developing transport infrastructure, especially by building good road network around the port environment.

Also, the only means of lifting cargo from the ports has been by the road using trucks without much attention paid to developing the rail transport into becoming an alternative means to ease the pressure on the limited road infrastructure in the country.

BusinessDay check reveals that it is about a year since the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) resuscitated the container haulage by rail using a weekly call of a rail wagon with the capacity for lifting 20 containers from Apapa Container Terminal in Lagos to Inland Container Nigeria Limited (ICNL) in Kano. This service, which has a tiny impact on movement of cargo with the successful lifting of 80 containers per month amounting to the lifting of a maximum of 960 containers annually out of the 630,000 TEUs of containers that call at Apapa Container Terminal, needs to be improved on if the gridlock on Nigerian roads is to be reduced.

Obiageli Duru, deputy commercial manager, APM Terminals, suggests that the country needs to look into having an effective rail system that would ensure an average of five wagons that can move cargo from Apapa Container Terminal to Port Harcourt, Onitsha, Aba, Kano and Kaduna on weekly basis. This is in addition to having other wagons that would lift cargo from other terminals in Lagos to the hinterland.

Further check reveals that there is no existence of call-up system for trucks operating in Apapa port, especially Apapa Container Terminal, as publicly claimed by the NPA at the stakeholders’ meeting chaired by Sylvester Monye, senior special adviser to the president on Monitoring, Evaluation and Performance.

Therefore, there is a need for a truck transit park dedicated to each trucks operating in all the terminals in Lagos. With the existence of such, the terminal operators can introduce a coordinated call-up system for all the trucks operating in the port, which is currently not in existence.

Equally, the inability of Customs, clearing agents and other agencies at the port to achieve effective 24-hour port operation as done by the terminal operators is also contributing largely to slowdown of cargo handling and clearing processes at the port.

As such, there is need for Customs to carry out 24-hour cargo examination instead of the current 9am to 4pm operational timing. Agents also need to start taking delivery of the cargo at night to ease the rush that occurs during the day.

Uzoamaka Anagor