The fact that the management of the AP Moller Terminal (APMT) Apapa secretly acquired the Lillypond Container Depot at Ijora with the intent of converting it to empty container depot may have been the reason why efforts to get the place and running even with the re-designation of the depot recently may have failed to yield fruit.
This is so as investigations by Primetime Reporters revealed that months after the depot was carved out from the Apapa port and re-designed Tincan 2, containers as well as business activities are yet to take off at the depot, a situation that has got the freight forwarders’ hope that they would soon heave a sigh of relief dashed again.
Speaking to our correspondent in Lagos on this matter, the Chairman, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Lillypond/Ijora chapter, Rev. Emmanuel Agubanze posited that there were many reasons responsible for the laiz-affairs attitude of the management of the Lillypond depot to turn the place around for business activities to thrive one of which he said was the secret acquisition of the depot by APMT management.
He provided that even the management of the depot drew their monthly salaries and overhead from the management of APMT the reason behind the unwilling to do anything so as to make the depot come back to life.
He said,” There are so many issues that might be responsible for such attitude by the owners of the terminal. You know Lillypond has gone a long way, the people that are managing Lillypond presently are not the original people the terminal was concessioned to. I will say that they came through the back door.
“The concession was given to Maersk Nigeria Limited and Maersk Nigeria Limited brought in CIS Lillypond and CIS then transferred the ownership to APMT. So, APMT is the owner of Lillypond right now but there were not the original owners of Lillypond. I don’t know how they came about that because I believe that the government might be looking at the original owners and I want to believe that the BPE that did the privatization is aware of what is happening because this APMT has another motive, they want to convert that place to empty container holding bay that will be profitable for them. I think that is what they are planning to do but it is illegal, you can’t do that because if you do that, you are truncating the intendment of government because government in its wisdom did the concessioning and the intention was to bring in expertise to enhance productivity, to bring efficient and effective management skill and to transfer such skill to Nigerians at the end of the day.
“When you decide not use the contract, the contract is that you are going to use the terminal as a cargo terminal and remember it is also a customs command. So, the intention is that you have to use it the way it is in the contract, you can’t midway decide to say okay, let me begin to put refuse in Lillypond because it pays me better to use it as a refuse dump for all the refuse collected in Lagos state and people will be paying. It is not what government wants to do”.
Agubanze therefore advocated that the terminal operator should stick to the terms and conditions of agreement that he signed with the government and not to use the depot for whatever business he wants to do.
When asked if he has evidence to buttress his position, he said,” Yes of course, APMT is overseeing Lillypond. In fact, the Managing Director of Lillypond and some other senior officials of the Lillypond Container Depot draw their salaries from APMT. Yes, it is verifiable. So, Lillypond is part of APMT and together they are all affiliate of the mother corporation which is APM/Maersk, so, they are all together, that is why APMT is using that place”.
Meanwhile, all attempt made by our correspondent to get the reaction of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to this allegation proved abortive as the General Manager Public Affair’s phone number was not reachable while efforts at getting across to APMT yielded no result as several attempts made at reaching its spokesman were rebuffed as at the time of filing this report.
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