The Need To Rescue Eastern Ports From Throes of Death

The efforts of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to revive the ailing ports in the Eastern flank of the country have been consistent and persistent but with little success.

Apart from the Lagos ports which remain the flagship of the port industry that account for over 60 percent of shipping activities in the country, there are other ports in the Eastern Zone of the NPA which include Port Harcourt port, Onne port, Warri port, Koko port and Calabar port.

The Ibom Deep Seaport at Ibaka, Akwa Ibom State is still at the gestation stage.

However, apart from Onne port which due to its strategic location at oil services area that made it marginally productive, the rest of the ports in that axis are virtually idle.

The situation has gotten to a stage that they have become big drain on the resources of the NPA that has failed to get returns on its huge investments it has consistently sunk into these ports over the years.

Over the years, the Port Authority had made several efforts to stimulate activities at these ports but to no avail.

Prior to the 2006 port concession programme, a 30 percent reduction on all NPA tariff was granted to lure importers and shipping companies to patronise the ports in the Eastern axis but with little results before the gesture was withdrawn.

Under the present NPA management, another concessionary discount of 10 percent on harbour dues was also granted to bring back the fleeing importers and their agents but to no avail.

This effort was complemented with the multi-billion naira dredging of Warri ports, deployment of equipment said to worth over $30million to the ports in that axis.

Curiously, importers, shipping companies and other merchants in related shipping activities still prefer Lagos ports with their malignant traffic gridlock and over stretched infrastructural facilities.

There is no gainsaying the imperative need to make the Eastern ports attractive to ports users.

The Lagos ports are congested and have reached a breaking point and the urgent need to attract some of the users of the over-stretched Lagos ports to the Eastern ports cannot be overemphasized.

More importantly, some of the owners of the cargoes that are destined for the East, South -South and Eastern parts of the North who ordinarily should have preferred the Eastern ports due to their proximity to the destination of their cargos, curiously still patronise the Lagos Ports.

We believe that the problems of the Eastern ports which have made them pariah among the shipping community are not insurmountable.

To us at nigeriamaritime360.com, these problems are mostly man-made and self-inflicted, apart from the natural disadvantage of Calabar port with its characteristic high siltation level that has continually made its long channel shallow and unable to accommodate bigger vessels.

These are oft-repeated problems known to all stakeholders and government which include the insecurity such as youths restiveness in the Niger-Delta, piracy, sea-robberies, dilapidated and decayed infrastructure at some of these ports as well as deplorable roads.

While we blame the Federal government for its failure or lack-lustre efforts to tackle the issue of insecurity, especially the restiveness of the youth in the Niger-Delta which was allowed to linger and fester at the time the agitation of South-South region of the country for resource control was at its feverish pitch, we equally frown at the successive NPA managements’ timidity in tackling the issue of infrastructural development of the ports in that axis.

Though we commend the remedial efforts of the present management of the authority to fix the infrastructural decay, we however dare say the problems have accumulated far too long for this present efforts to have immediate visible impart.

One of the potent problems of the Eastern ports that has posed a formidable challenge to their viability is the issue of insecurity.

This has made the freight rates of the shipping companies to be more than triple the ones they impose on Lagos ports.

For instance, due to the real or imaginary fears of insecurity of their vessels and crew members, the shipping companies have increased the freight rates of cargoes to the Eastern ports by almost 300 percent.

In addition, insurance premium has increased while special rates called war surcharges are most of the times slammed on importers by vessels that agree to go to that region as most of them decline offer to make voyage to the ports in that axis .

This development has expectedly made the use of the ports in the Eastern Zone very uneconomical for importers, hence their preference for the Lagos ports despite their own challenges.

Given this scenario and the fact that government cannot claim ignorance of this development , we consider the current public hearing on the challenges of the Eastern ports being conducted by an Ad-Hoc committee of the House of Representatives as a mere academic exercise if the Federal government does not muster the necessary political will to tackle this problem headlong.

In as much as we appreciate the concerns of members of the National Assembly over the parlous state of the Eastern ports, their efforts in conducting the public hearing into this matter will be a mere circus show where all the stakeholders, including the government agencies, engage in what we consider high sounding rhetorical exercise if they fail to compel the relevant authorities to resolve the multi-faceted problems facing these ports.

Resolving the insecurity issues, especially piracy attacks, sea robberies, kidnappings and armed banditry in that part of the country holds the key to the resuscitation of shipping activities and viability of the Eastern ports.

As much as the remedial efforts of NPA to fix the infrastructural decay at the ports and the fixing of the roads by the federal ministry of works are desirable and necessary, we consider them as complementary efforts to tackling the main menace of insecurity.

No amount of persuasion or concessionary discounts by the NPA will make importers go back to the Eastern ports if the issue of insecurity is not resolved.

We believe that resolving the insecurity in the region will win back the confidence of foreign ship owners to patronise the ports and make them normalise their outrageous freight charges that will make the patronage by importers economical.

This, we hope will rescue the Eastern ports from the throes of death as importers will start to patronise them, thus relieving the Lagos ports of its cargo and human traffic that have stretched their facilities to a breaking point.