Stakeholders disagree over cause of Eastern ports under utilisation

Harboursandport.com: Lagos - Stakeholders in the maritime industry are in disagreement over the causes of under utilisation of the Eastern ports.

Aerial view of a port 

Speaking at a strategic group meeting organised by the Nigerian Chamber of Shipping in Lagos with the theme “Maximising The Economics of The Eastern Ports,” while some of the stakeholders blamed the under utilisation of the faulty structure of most of the ports in the Eastern part of the country; others are of the opinion that government lack of willingness was the main cause of the problem facing these ports.

Admiral Dele Ezeoba (rtd), said at the event that what is lacking is the political will to optimise the ports. Ezeoba noted that one of the ways to make the ports more functional is dedicating them as specialised ports for specific import items.

According to him, “I will like to take it up from where Captain Iheanacho stopped, in as much as I share in his thought and views; I beg to disagree with some of them. For me, I likened the discourse to the fact that in every infrastructure there is always a provision for what we call a scale up.

“In your engineering design you must provide for a scale up knowing that at the time you are building that port or infrastructure to support it, this is benchmark with which it is done but you must provide a scale up knowing that the numbers will increase.

“So what it means is that in the planning process, if it is not articulate and defined within the content of the parameters which is data driven, then you will have issues. I take a ship for instance if you build a ship in1946, for as long as that ship continues to undergo what we call major refit programme there is nothing like an old ship,” he noted.

Also General Manager, Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Capt. Iheanacho Ebubeogu, blamed the structure of these ports built in the 1970’s.

Ebubeogu explained that those ports were established with the vessels trending at that point in time, added to the fact that the channels leading to these ports could not be dredged below 10 meters.

“I did not say that we should close the Eastern ports but I said that with the design of the ports and with their viability, I proffered solutions on how we can do better. It is difficult for you to go beyond 10 meters because of two things; one, the architectural design when General Gowon was building those ports ships were big but today there are bigger.

“In fact you see what is happening now with the (telephone) service providers, they say 3G is good but 4G is better.”

Giving an analogy of a building, Ebubeogu noted that “You have a three storey building and because you have many people looking for houses you go and add a storey more to it. If it falls what happened to somebody at Ijegbo will happen to you.”

However,

Former National President of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders, NAGAFF, Eugene Nweke, said government insincerity is the major problem of under utilisation of the Eastern ports.

He noted that attention is only now being focused on the Eastern ports because of the problem in Lagos but stressed the need for government to do everything possible to encourage the usage of these ports as the nation will be better for it.

He pointed out the need for government to return to the original purpose for the construction of these ports rather than shift attention to the Eastern ports because of the problem in Lagos.