Recent calls by the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) on the federal government to divert all Lagos bound cargoes to the eastern ports as a way of decongesting the Apapa and Tincan Island ports has generated mixed reactions among the stakeholders who expressed divergent opinion on the calls.
The National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche in an interview recently said that the only way to solve the congestion issue currently plaguing the Ports of Apapa and Tincan Island was for the federal government to declare state of emergency at the ports and subsequently divert all cargoes destined to Lagos to the eastern ports and block all vessels from coming to discharge at Lagos ports until the situation at the ports is brought under control.
However, reacting to the call, the Lagos State Vice Chairman, Dry Cargo Section of the National Association Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Alhaji Abdullahi Inuwa Mohammed while pointing out that they had been calling for diversion of Lagos bound cargoes to the eastern ports, however said that since some of the ports in the eastern region had been abandoned for a long time, it was obvious that some of the infrastructures must have decayed and would need attention.
Mohammed also said that because of security challenge in the Niger-Delta region, some importers prefer to ship their containers through Lagos port.
He observed that since it is within powers of the shippers to determine the port of final destination for their shipments hence those already on sail may have to be allowed to berth at Lagos ports while those about to ship their goods to Nigeria should be advised to look for an alternative port in the east for their shipment to allow for decongestion of the Lagos ports.
“But before then, whatever infrastructure that is required to be in place in the eastern ports must have been ready, not that the Lagos experience would be repeated at those ports. What I mean is that they should have all their handling equipment on ground, good road networks to accommodate the volume of trucks that will come there. And more importantly, they should have parking space for the trucks”, he said.
For a former Chairman, International Freight Forwarders Association (IFFA), Apapa Chapter, Mr. Ojo Peter Akintoye, the calls, if heeded to by the federal government would not be feasible going by the fact that importers determine the final destination of their goods hence if an importer chose Apapa port as the final destination for his goods and it was diverted to Warri, it could be interpreted as breach of contract which may trigger off legal action.
Akintoye added,” The question is, if they move all the shipments to Calabar or to Port-Harcourt, does it solve the problem of Apapa? Does it repair the Apapa roads? The port is not the problem of Lagos state, the problem we are having in Apapa is tank farms, that is what the federal government should try to relocate. We have sixty-four tank farms in Lagos state and eighty- four percent of them are in Apapa and you will agree with me that when they were constructing this Apapa as a port, it was not in the plan that we are going to have tank farms in Apapa, because if the federal government was futuristic about Apapa, then there could have been better plan because there is no better plan for Apapa. There is no road and there is no other alternative.
“If all the shipments are moved to the east as they are suggesting, we are still going to experience what we are experiencing in Lagos over there”.
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