Following the recent launch of Kaduna Dry Port by President Muhammadu Buhari, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has harped on the need for Nigeria’s transport system to be centred on the rail while allowing other modes of transport to complement it.
The General Manager, Marine Operations of NPA, Captain Iheanacho Ebubeogu who made this submission at the stakeholders’ meeting on the operation of the Kaduna Dry Port organized by the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NCS) in Lagos yesterday said that without rail, such project as Kaduna Dry Port and others that would come after it would collapse even before they start operation.
Ebubeogu reiterated that one of the benefits that would come from making the rail the backbone of transportation in Nigeria would be the duplication and multiplication of dry ports across the country.
In his words,” Let our backbone be rail, then let other means of transport complement them. And one of the things we are going to benefit if we do so is the inland dry port which is gradually coming up now in Kaduna. I hope that others will come up, then we must operate rail, without rail, I hear some people say as temporary measures, use roads, without rail, those things will start and close before we know it.
“There must be rail because all about cargo is just in time, to be safe and for the cost of landing to be competitive. So, it is advisable that while we are looking at inland dry ports, let us make rail work and efficiently”.
He noted that for the rail to work efficiently, there must be schedule and that each schedule must be reliable saying that “if the schedule is not there and it is not reliable, then the process is truncated, other means of transport will be more competitive and the bottom line of what we are doing these days is that we must consider the businessman, if the businessman does not see a system viable comparatively, he will not go there and therefore, the Chairman here, we won’t be able to put smile on his face because transport is derived demand, if the demand is not there, then transport will not hold. And the bottom line of any port is cargo, it is cargo driven and if that cargo is not coming at a time and at a cost that will make it competitive, you will not have a dry port”.
The General Manager added that a good port had to be a transit area even as he contended that if a port ceases to be a transit area, it had lost the virtues of a port as it becomes a tourist area.
Ebubeogu therefore pointed out that all effort must be geared toward making both the seaports and dry ports in the country transit areas as well as to encourage the Nigerian Railway Corporation not only for the dry port but also to realize that Nigeria should have a transport system centred on rail.
“So, I want to appeal here, it is good that we are not going to support the Nigerian Railway (Corporation) on only inland dry port but to realize that Nigeria is country where our transport system, the backbone must be rail”, he surmised.
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