Fears as regional competitors’ target 100% cargo traffic in W/Central Africa
Leading shipping analyst and President of National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Mr. Lucky Amiwero, on Monday in Lagos called for an immediate reversal of an emerging dangerous trend in the shipping industry capable of pushing Nigerian players out of business in cargo traffic in the West and Central Africa.
But to change the ugly scenario, the Managing Director of Eyis Resources Limited called for urgent establishment of deep sea ports for Nigeria to control over 95 per cent of cargo within the sub-region.
According to him, presently Nigeria controlled between 70 to 75 per cent of cargo within West Africa and also had a huge market, which was the target of the regional competitors.
He added further that Nigeria’s way-out was to develop deep sea ports that would accommodate what regional competitors were putting in place, stressing that “The development of a load centre leads to new distribution pattern as any new creation within West Africa Sub-region will alter the distribution pattern by siphoning business from Nigerian ports”.
“This practice is common in the development of transshipment centre. Mega container ship with 2000 to 18,000 TUEs are now deployed to the existing load centre that can accommodate them”, Amiwero said.
The maritime expert noted that the Lagos port access road was facing challenges especially trucks with empty containers for offloading, loading, waiting for client, broken-down trucks, empty tanker waiting to load fuel and tanker looking for clients.
Other challenges capable of taking away the multibillion dollar business away from Nigerians the rigors faced by containers delays and during clearance traced to enormous procedures attached to cargo clearance.
Again, the high number of man-hour wasted during loading vessels and transferring containers to the storage yard need to be reversed to grow the competitiveness of the Nigerian ports.
