Shippers’ Council boss rates Nigerian Ports high despite threats from Togo and Ghana

Abiola Seun

The Nigerian Shippers’ Council has said that the Nigerian seaports have become efficient and effective that 80 percent of cargoes destined for West and Central African are discharged at Nigerian seaports.

This was disclosed by the executive secretary of the Council, Barr. Hassan Bello in a chat with journalists recently.

According to him, the Ghana and Togo port are not a threat to Nigerian seaports because of its efficiency.

Recall that there are report that Lomé port, Togo now hosts West Africa’s leading container port, snatching the position from Lagos ports in Nigeria in the last quarter of 2018 while APM Terminal said its $1billion investment at Tema port still on schedule and when completed will handle 3.5 million TEUs in annual throughput capacity when fully built out.

According to Netherlands leading consulting firm, Dynamar, the Port of Lomé (PAL) in Togo has rapidly expanded from 311,500 twenty-foot equivalent (TEU) containers in 2013 to 1,193,800 TEU in 2017.

The surge is due to the commissioning of the Lomé Container terminal (LCT) which handles containers shipped through the port of Lomé. LCT actually handles nearly 890,000 TEU yearly that is about 75% of containers that transit via the PAL.

But, the Shippers’ Council boss believed despite the feat achieved by the Ghana and Lome poets, Nigeria seaport still remained preferred destination for cargoes in the sub-region.

He said, “Out of the cargoes that is meant for West and Central Africa coming from around the world, 80 percent of the cargoes comes to Nigeria while other countries share the remaining 20percent and distributed among themselves.”

“So, how can they be a hub? Also Nigerian ports are becoming efficient by the day and we are attracting cargoes from other neighbouring ports.

The moment we get our infrastructure right and get our connectivity right, we also patronise our eastern port and also tackle insecurity on the waterways, then that’s where we see the real hub.”

Bello also stated that the actualization of the Lekki deep-seaport project would further consolidate the hub status.

“Also, we have the Lekki deep seaports with its huge capacity and when the Lekki port is completed and it came fully on board, we will get bigger ships and send the smaller ones to other countries.”

Also, speaking on the National Transport Commission (NTC) Bill, he said the bill would be assented to by President Muhammadu Buhari before the end of the current administration.

His words, “The rejection of the bill is a misconception and I would love many of your colleagues to do more research on the issue.

The Ministry of Transportation called the meeting of all heads of agencies to discuss the NTC bill. The meeting was held about three months ago and we made observations because the bill was no longer under us, it was going through legislative process and the legislators have their faculties and their consultants.

But when we saw the bill, there were some certain things that had to be removed so the Minister wrote to the President that the bill is good to be signed except for only three areas of observations noted.

“So, the President wrote to the Senate that the observations be removed and they have done so. It is now a clean bill but because of the election, it is delayed. So both the Senate and House of Assembly have finished with the bill but then there is administrative machinery in the National Assembly. They are looking at it so they could pass it again to the President. So that is what we are waiting for.”