By Uzor Odigbo
The National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Chief Iju Tony Nwabunike has said that 24 hours clearance of goods and services at Nigerian ports, especially in western zone would be very difficult.
Nwabunike who stated this in an interview in Lagos recently said that his position on the matter was informed by the fact that access roads to the ports were overstretched with containers even as most of the empty containers had not been taken back to their origin and trucks littered all over the place.
According to him “From this point of my office (at Amuwo-Odofin) to Tincan is nothing less than 10 kilometers but you can see the traffic, you can see the trucks there. If you don’t go getting your truck inside the port, how can you now evacuate your consignment? So, I think, it is not going to be easy.”
While also raising the security issues that go with 24 hour cargo clearance at the ports, he pointed out that there must be one stop shop for all the security agencies to work simultaneously so as to do away with the multiple units created by the security agencies which poses an impediment to seamless port operations.
According to him, “A situation where one security agency or government agency will decentralize itself and having multiple units, therefore making things cumbersome should be discourage. They should go back to the ease of doing business policy and begin to work with the Vice president of the Federal Government of Nigeria who started it so that they can get things easily done.
Most importantly is the gateway to the ports, gateways to the ports are very difficult; it takes me three and a half hours to go to the port every day from Victoria Island. What it means is that, if for example, you are talking about taking your container or taking your vehicle to go to load and bring it the same day to beat the 21 days despite the fact that all the security agencies have finished their work, it is not going to be possible.
“But we really want it to get to a situation where it will be possible, we want to work 24 hours, we want to achieve result, we want to take our goods as soon as possible so that we will avoid these demurrages from the shipping companies and terminal operators.”
On intermodal transportation, the ANLCA boss observed that this had been very epileptic to the extent that the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) did not have standard gauge as according to him, a single gauge cannot take more than 20 laden containers in one month.
“So, you find out that it is not going to be easy, it is not possible for the Nigerian Railway Corporation to work now. Their level of work is below standard because they don’t have coaches, they don’t have wagons, they have not gotten to the standard gauge which they are still building and the Minister of Transportation who wants to get in fully involved with this rail rehabilitation is not having it easy with the National Assembly. So, that area is a no go area for now because it is not working.
“Then again, if you look at the barges, I think the National Inland Waterways Authority should work very hard on barges because if you look at the level of barges we are bringing in today, they are very archaic. If you remember, some containers have actually capsized into the water and these are the very areas that concerns are very high that its security should be looked into.
“So, I think that the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) should work very hard in licensing the barges and knowing exactly the type of barges we are going to use. But let me say that these barges are the only little way forward to what we are seeing today because we can access the Nigerian ports through the waters.
So, the barges are actually helping and cushioning the effect a little bit only that the quality of barges should be checked just like the kind of trucks we see on the roads where they do not have enough qualities to be on the road if they go through the VIO scrutiny. So, if the barges go through the NIWA scrutiny, I think some of them should be upgraded and be put to a very good standard”, he stated