Dakuku Peterside, Hadiza Bala Usman Bag CILT Fellowship

By ZION Olalekan

The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Dr. Dakuku Peterside and the Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) on Tuesday were inducted as fellows of the prestigious Chartered Institute of logistics and Transport (CILT)

The induction ceremony was performed at a leadership Impact Programme 2018 which held at the Eko Hotel in Lagos.

The event also witnessed other maritime stakeholders being honoured. The ceremony also featured the inauguration ceremony of the CILT’s new Council. The Council board members were elected late October. And they will serve the institute for the next two years.

Meanwhile, National President of CILT, Mr. Ibrahim Jibril while speaking urged all stakeholders in the maritime industry to collaborate to end the continuous traffic situation along Oshodi/Apapa Expressway and the adjoining roads within Apapa.

”We need so much regulation in the industry. The transport system needs to be visited. We can have transport system that is comparable to other transport systems of the world.” He said

On the port access roads, the CILT national president said: “We are having series of challenges in our ports access roads. And that challenges still go to the truck drivers. This has really affected the prices of goods that are imported through Apapa ports. Then what is the way out of these problems in our ports? There needs to be collaboration among the agencies in the port.

“For example these holding bays we have been yarning for? And for all the trucks to be coming to the ports at the same time, outside that, there is need for Truck Transit Park (TTP) and such park should be at the outskirt of Apapa, which can house all of them so that when they are called upon, they will come to the port.

Now, they only call the required number that is needed at a particular time. In all, I think inter-agency collaboration will be in the best to achieve that”

On another way out transport dilemma, the president said that intermodal transport system would be the solution.
”Inter-modalism is what is required in this place. It is the solution to all these. That is very important, we need making use of our waterways, barges, pipelines, rail tracks to bring in containers into our ports so that we can see how we use flat bottom barges to carry empty containers to the ports to Badagry and such places like that.”