Oluyinka Onigbinde
Despite last week’s approval of Lekki deep seaport as a Customs port and a government-approved Wharf by President Muhammadu Buhari, some stakeholders in the nation’s maritime industry have expressed doubts over the planned commercial take-off of the port in September.
Recall that President Muhammadu Buhari had approved the Lekki port for commercial take-off and berthing of commercial vessels, via a message through the Ministry of Transportation to the Managing Director of Nigerian Port Authority (NPA); Mohammed Bello-Koko.
Consequent upon the approval, the NPA added that the port is now set for the berthing of vessels. But, stakeholders who spoke to Shipping Position Daily expressed doubt that the port will be ready for commercialization in September as assured by its handlers.
Some of them pointed to the comatose state of the road leading to the port, as well as the lack of rail, among other necessary infrastructures.
In a chat with our correspondent the founder and CEO, Center for Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) Dr Muda Yusuf said he has doubt that the port will commence full commercial operations by September.
He argued that, although the port may be pronounced as ready technically, it may not in actual fact be ready commercially.
He said: “I have my doubt that there will be full commercial operations by that date; if we are talking about technical readiness, it can, but in terms of full commercial operations, I doubt if that will happen, we are talking about less than two months now, I have my doubt”.
Yusuf noted that though the Lagos state government is putting efforts to construct the road leading to the port, with the help of the federal government, he nevertheless pointed out that logistics movement will be a major setback, even as the Dangote refinery is also billed to commence operations soon.
“On the issue of the infrastructure, the Lagos State government has a big stake in this project and they have been responding to the fears or the concerns of stakeholders, especially on the issues of logistics support for that port; logistics in terms of delivering things.
“Not only the ports, even the Dangote refinery; those two big projects, so there have been some responses by the Lagos State government about some ideas and about the kind of road that will be constructed, the ring road, there are some arguments that have been put forward, I don’t have the details. But the issue of roads and all these things is not the issue for the deep seaport to handle”.
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On the anticipated traffic, he said, I’m thinking that some of the things that will happen are to do a lot of evacuation, either by barges or something, using the water to evacuate most of the things and also using pipe under that water to evacuate some of these refined products to the depot, rather than using tankers to be loading, they better make use of the water to do evacuation”.
“I have my doubt that, there will be full commercial operations, by that date, if we are talking about technical readiness, it can, but in terms of full commercial operations, I doubt if that will happen, we are talking about less than two months now, I have my doubt” he stressed.
A transport expert, who is the Director of Safety Beyond Borders, Mr. Adenusi Patrick expressed fear that the port will begin commercial operation by September. He said the already collapsed Apapa corridor is about to be transferred to the Lekki corridor.
He said the only access road to the Lekki port corridor, which was constructed 42 years ago, will experience proliferation of trucks to increase the already huge traffic situation on the road.
He said most ports in the world use trans-modal means of transportation for cargo evacuation and movement, stating that there ought to have been a rail designed to the Lekki deep seaport, which should have been completed, rather than having it as an afterthought when the port operations commence and everything collapses.
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