The Shippers’ Association Lagos State (SALS) has taken a stand against calls in some quarters for goods destined to Lagos ports be diverted to the eastern ports and other ports in the country in other to reduce the cost of clearing cargo at the ports.
Giving reasons for opposing the calls, the President of SALS, Rev. Dr. Jonathan Nicol said that people calling for the use of eastern ports don’t really know the problem in Port-Harcourt, as according to him, the draught in the port was not as deep as Lagos ports and that the market itself was not the size of Lagos.
Nicol argued that should one clear his cargo at the eastern ports, one may not have the kind of market that he had in Lagos to dispense his goods at a reasonable time and make a turn over adding that the cost of moving goods from Port-Harcourt to Lagos was higher than that of moving goods from Lagos to Port-Harcourt.
In his words,” It’s is cheaper for you to clear in Lagos than for you to clear in Port-Harcourt. First, the checkpoints along Port-Harcourt roads are ten times more than what you have from here to Port-Harcourt. From Port-Harcourt to Aba for instance, you can get more than twenty checkpoints of different government agencies and for each checkpoint you pay toll.
“So, when they now compute how much they spend, they find that it is more than 60 percent cheaper to clear from Lagos. If they clear from Lagos, you know the market at Alaba and Trade Fair; they can do away with those goods in less than three to four days. It is the number of trips that the shippers make that determines his profit; it’s not one off shipment that makes you rich”.
He insisted that if the federal government as a matter of policy diverts all the goods to eastern ports, there would be a serious lull even as he added that some people could as a result; decide to go to import goods through Cotonou as it is nearer to Lagos than going to Port-Harcourt.
On the way forward, the SALS boss stated,” Like I said, people are coming together now to discuss and that is the major thing. All of us have agreed now to come together and we are now proffering solutions at different levels how we can solve this problem (gridlock). That’s the beginning of finding solution. It’s not going to be forever because it’s a man-made thing.
“What we need NPA to do now that we are all coming together to find solutions to the problem is for them to be a little bit flexible with us unlike before the whole of the problems were on the heads of the shipping companies and terminal operators. So, now, all of us concerned citizens in the maritime industry have come together and they have told us what their problems are and we ourselves told them what our problem are, we put the problem on the table and sort them out one by one. The most important one is for us to get this road free and free our bridges”.
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