Hope fades for assured arrival of 20 new coaches to activate Kaduna Dry Port
Just like the shocking postponement of the revival of all four national oil refineries from this year to 2020 by the Minister of State for Petroleum, Dr Ibe Kachukwu, strong indications have emerged suggesting that the publicized arrival of not less than 20 new coaches that will step up activities at the Kaduna Dry Port (KDP) may have been deferred indefinitely.
Otherwise, more than nine months after President Muhammadu Buhari commissioned Kaduna Inland Dry Port, activities had remained stagnant due to lack of train coaches.
During a stakeholders meeting on Kaduna Dry Port in April, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Barrister Hassan Bello, had assured that the deployment to be made by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC), would activate the commencement of operations at the KDP.
Though he made it clear then that although activities had commenced at the port, there would be no significant improvement until the arrival of the coaches which are yet to arrive.
Whereas industry analysts fear the impacts of paucity of funds for the ordering of the coaches, others are of the opinion that nothing may have been ordered in the first instance.
The claims of nothing has been ordered is coming from the fact that since February, the stakeholders’ meeting was held at Federal Palace Hotel, Lagos, both the NSC and NRC or even the Minister of Transportation has been able to give any meaningful update on whereabouts of the assured 20 coaches after all.
Business Hilights recalls that during the meeting in the first quarter of the year, Bello had insisted that “Kaduna Dry Port has come to stay since the inauguration in January; a lot of activities have been going on. Most importantly is to make the Kaduna Port an international port”.
“A place where an importer can consign his goods and exporters can use the same facilities to export, in other word, Kaduna Port is a port of origin and port of destination.
Besides, further findings by Business Hilights showed that other emerging Inland Dry Ports across the country are having issues of poor private sector funding and tactical withdrawal of interests.
