FG officially frustrating S’East by abandoning Onitsha River Port—OCCIMA
Business leaders in the South East region of Nigeria, who had hoped to drive their businesses using the long-rehabilitated Onitsha River Port, have rolled out facts and figures suggesting that the Federal Government deliberately sat on the concessioning of the port to kill their businesses in the last five to six years.
Key amongst their facts included the open assurance handed down by the Vice President, Yemi Osinbajo, who confided in South East business stakeholders’ during his visit to Anambra State in 2018 that government has concluded arrangements to name a concessionaire for the port to be put to use.
Besides, several pleas made by South East leaders to the government since the coming of President Muhammadu Buhari in 2015 to name a concessionaire have all landed on hard-hearing ears till date.
Business Hilights recalls that former President Goodluck Jonathan, had done every needed job in terms of rehabilitating the maritime infrastructure, dredged the Niger for seamless navigation of bigger vessels and was at the point of naming a concessionaire before he lost election in March 2015. Till date, the current administration under the re-elected President Buhari had maintained official mute on the fate of the multibillion naira taxpayers’ facility.
However, only recently, the Onitsha Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (OCCIMA), stepped up cries for the naming of a concessionaire for the River Port so as to reduce losses incurred while importing all the way from highly congested Lagos ports.
The Chamber, again called on the authorities not to use sentimental or regional politics of suppression to kill the original vision of a functional River Port in Onitsha, the commercial city of Anambra State.
President of the Chamber, Chief Don Ebubeogu, who spoke passionately on the theme: ‘Onitsha River Port Capacity and Possibilities’, at the 12th Edition of “The Perspective’’, an annual lecture series of the chamber in Onitsha, averred that “The project, which was initiated out of sound economic consideration for the benefit of the nation’s economy, has been left to waste away for no reason”.
“A port that boasts of transit sheds, warehouses of 100 x 55 meters with storage capacity of 10, 000 twenty-foot equivalent units, operations building and fuel tank farm, among others should not be left to waste.
Going down memory lane, Chief Ebubeogu decried that “The non-functionality of the port, several years after the project was initiated by former President Shehu Shagari in 1983, was hampering economic growth of the sector and businesses that rely on import and export in the South East region of Nigeria”.
While recalling that former President Jonathan had approved and released about N4.6 billion in 2012 for the rehabilitation of the facility which was done and delivered had continued to wait for only a concessionaries endlessly till now.
According to him, “The usual convention after commissioning a facility as important as a River Port would be an official declaration and gazetting of the facility to give it a legal status to operate.
“But the Onitsha River Port has no such proclamation made. What happened? Why should the port not be operational?”
However, in his speech, the Managing Director of National Inland Water Ways Authority (NIWA), Senator Adeleke Mamora, underscored the importance of the River Port, but was still economical with words on when it will become functional after all.
