NPA Gambit to Decongest Lagos Ports

Recently, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) made a proclamation that vessels which stay longer than necessary (about four days) to discharge at a terminal due to lack of space will be asked to proceed to another terminal in the Lagos Pilotage District.

In the event that such vessels still do not get space in any of the terminals in the Lagos Pilotage District, they will then be diverted to the ports in the Eastern axis.

This measure, according to the NPA, was due to the burgeoning congestion at Lagos ports which is caused by the collapsed infrastructures at the ports.

According to the agency, the diversion became necessary to improve the turnaround time of vessels which has worsened over the period of time and impacting on federal government Ease of Doing Business effort.

This directive, which was supposed to have taken effect January 27, 2020 and as good intentioned as it is to solve the build-up of cargo at Lagos ports, has thrown up some issues which NPA needs to resolve.

Who bears the extra costs which the diversion will engender?

Is it the shipper who has made extensive economic decisions before he chose Lagos ports as the final destination of his cargo, essentially due to the nearness to the market and other factors?

Does the NPA have the right to dictate to a shipper where he should take his cargo, especially when the law of contract of affreightment concedes such right to him?

We recognise the validity of purpose of NPA on this directive which we believe was taken as the last resort to tackle the port congestion.

We equally sympathise with the port authority over the hard decision which the exigencies of time have forced it to take.

However, we believe that the NPA might have taken a decision that could trigger unintended adverse effects on import trade in the country which may send a wrong signal to the outside world.

The reasons why the NPA had to resort to this measure have clearly exposed the failure of government in its statutory responsibilities.

Notwithstanding the fact that the capacity of the Lagos ports which receive over 65 percent of imports to the country have been over stretched, the collapsed infrastructures at the ports have greatly contributed to the cargo glut.

Most importantly, the malignant traffic gridlock which was a result of the long-neglected ports access roads that had festered over the years, is the chief contributor to the cargo build – up in the terminals.

Goods discharged by vessels at the terminals were stranded as trucks could not get easy access to evaluate them.

The process of evacuation is painfully slow and cumbersome.

We think it is expedient not to subject shippers to further hardship and expenses as a result of the negligence of government.

We equally find it curious why the NPA is pretending not to know why Shippers have consistently shunned the Eastern ports for reasons known to all stakeholders, including the NPA.

As hard as the agency has tried to lure importers to patronise the Eastern ports, even with rebate in port costs, they have refused to patronise the place principally because of insecurity.

Piracy attacks and other forms of banditry are more rampant in that axis and that is why importers have continued to shun the use of the ports in the area, even if it is economically viable to do so.

Vessels that agree to patronise the Eastern ports do so at a premium price, while others slammed war risk charges on the shippers who are also made to pay high insurance premium.

The problems of the Eastern ports were so poignant that they caught the attention of members of the House of Representatives who last year instituted an ad-hoc committee to address these problems.

Have those problems been solved that the NPA will now, by fiat, ‘force’ importers to patronise the place under the guise of diversion?

We don’t discountenance the good intention of the NPA over this diversion directive, but we dare say the authority did not consult widely, especially the concerned shippers, before it took the decision.

Our assumption was premised on the deluge of adverse comments and antagonism against this directive from the shippers who have roundly condemned the move.

Expectedly, they expressed concerns over the economic losses this measure portends.

We are also at a loss over the logic of the decision of the NPA to divert vessels from Lagos ports to the Eastern ports.

We have been repeatedly told by the NPA that apart from the issue of insecurity which importers have cited as being the cause of their refusal to patronise the Eastern ports, the shallow draught of some of the ports in that axis is another challenge which repels the patronage of bigger ocean-going vessels.

The Managing Director of the NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman, even suggested that flat-bottom vessels should be used to access the shallow channels of some of the ports in the Eastern ports.

How does the NPA wish to address this issue of shallow draught when it decides to divert bigger vessels to the Eastern ports?

We are equally aware that some of the terminals in the Eastern ports lack the requisite cargo handling equipment to handle the diverted vessels.

The situation could be better imagined when the terminals in the Lagos pilotage area reputed to be the flagship, also suffer from inadequate handling gears.

All these incontrovertible facts point to the conclusion that NPA may not have thoroughly analysed and assessed all the variables before it hastily resorted to this stop-gap measure.

We want to advise that the NPA should be wary of fatal unintended consequences which its directive may trigger in the import chains process.

We are yet to be convinced of how effective and sustainable this measure will be, given these unresolved puzzles that may truncate its intended objectives.

In as much as the NPA has the statutory obligation to make the ports efficient by preventing congestion, we dare to say such obligation does not obliterate the right of importer to choose where his cargo should go to.

Neither do we think it is tenable that NPA’s obligation should impose additional financial burden on the importers and their final consumers.

We believe that rather than subject the shipper to untold hardship, the NPA should sanitise the traffic call up system that was said to have collapsed and riddled with unmitigated corruption.

Also, NPA should be bold enough to engage the recalcitrant shipping companies and terminal operators who have consistently defiled all efforts to sanitise the cumbersome evacuation process of containers from the terminals.

It is a shame that after much efforts of the NPA to make the terminal operators and the shipping companies to play by the rules of the game, these service providers have unabashedly desecrated the orders of the ports authority.

We believe that if the NPA had stood its ground against the intransigence of the service providers, it wouldn’t have had to resort to “forcing” the Shippers to patronise ports that are not clearly their choice.