5,948 of 2.8 million containers moved by rail out of Apapa port in five years

Out of over 2.8 million containers received at the Apapa seaport in the last five years, only a paltry 5,948 containers load of cargoes were moved out by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC).

The Lagos Port Complex, Apapa is the only seaport in the western Zone connected by rail.
It would be recalled, that the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Hadiza Usman while on a tour of the ports recently, emphasized the need to move cargo in and out of the port by rail so as to lessen pressure on the roads.
She said that because of the exigency of the times, the NPA will work with the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to facilitate this by ensuring that the tracks are in place and provision made for rolling stock.
But, statistics obtained have shown that cargoes are not moved out of the port through rail as expected but by roads.

Data by a leading terminal operator however, showed that 5,948 containers out of 2,847,000 that were received in the year under review were moved by rail.
The data showed that in 2013, 625,000 containers were discharged at Lagos Port while, 613,000 were discharged in 2014.
In 2015, 604,000 were discharged while 505,000 and 500,000 were discharged in 2016 and 2017 respectively.
But, 650 containers were moved out of the port by rail in 2014, with 412 moved in 2015.
In 2016, the number dropped to 273 and moved up to 2760 in 2017.
However, 1853 containers have been moved so far from January to April 2018 from the Lagos port.
Inability to move containers by rail out of the seaport has put much pressure on the roads leading to dilapidated state of the port access roads.
Alhaji Inuwa Abdullahi, a transporter and the vice chairman, Dry Cargo section of the National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Lagos State, admitted that the initiative for goods to move out of the ports via railway lines would ease traffic on the roads.
He said, “NPA’s involvement to ease the cost of doing business at the seaport through cargo movement via rail network needs to be properly streamlined with the NRC for it to succeed”.
It was also gathered that inefficiencies on the part of the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has also contributed to the poor numbers of cargoes moved out from the port.
For instance, in 2013, when the then Transport minister, Senator Idris Umar, flagged off a regime of movement of containers by rail from Apapa port to the north, during one of the initial trips in the deal brokered between the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), a haulage train transporting 20 units of containers from Lagos port to ICNL depots in Kano and Kaduna states broke down at Mopa, a town in Kogi state.
In 2017 as well, a cargo train which took off from Lagos to Kano reportedly got to Oshogbo, about three of its last coaches detached from the rest.

Eyewitnesses alleged that the three coaches started moving backwards until they got to the interchange at the terminus in Oshogbo where the wheels got off the track and the coaches fell on their side.
Industry stakeholders had insisted that only a vibrant and viable NRC with functional fleet of engines and coaches can play a pivotal role to increase the capacity and efficiency of evacuation of cargoes from the ports to many towns along the rail network.
Speaking to newsmen, the National Publicity Secretary (NPS) of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Joe Sanni said rail remained the only alternative for movement of cargoes out of the seaports.
He however charged government, to invest heavily on railway infrastructure saying that would help decongest the nation’s roads.
His words, “Government should invest heavily in the rail system in order to use it as a means of evacuating goods out of the port.
“There is no doubt about the fact that the only way out of decongesting the port fast and ‎ease movement of goods out of the port is to move cargoes through rail which can carry as much as possible and can go the distance but it is the safest in view of our bad roads for now.”
Sanni, a foremost clearing agent said movement of goods by rail would also help reduce freight cost and by extension, reduce price of goods.
“The cost compare to road transport is low and the wagons can take as much as possibl. If we have to multiply that for one single journey for a cargo that is going up north and charging N300,000 to take it one by one and the charges will be spread on wagons. It is a lot cheaper going on rail than on road.”