Adedapo Adesanya
By Adedapo Adesanya
The Minister of Transportation, Mr Saidu Alkali, inaugurated the first cargo movement from the Lagos-Ibadan rail corridor during his first official tour of the rail corridor on Tuesday.
This effort is expected to decongest the Apapa port as shippers moved 92.28 per cent of Nigeria’s total exports and 60.77 per cent of imports through the facility in the first quarter of 2022 (Q1’22), according to the latest available data.
The Minister kicked off the tour at the Ebute Meta station before proceeding to Apapa for the launch, then travelled to Ibadan using the 157 km rail corridor. Three coaches of 30 wagons were loaded as the inaugural freight movement was kicked off.
The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) said it would start with three coaches per day, with its Managing Director (MD) noting that the corporation had the capacity to scale up the numbers.
On its part, the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) has over the years embarked on de-concentration of ports activities away from Lagos to Delta and Eastern ports a few years ago at the backdrop of growing congestion at the Lagos Ports, but this has still not yielded much result.
In June, NPA also commenced evacuation of overtime cargoes from ports in Lagos following the input of the Permanent Secretary Federal Ministry of Transportation, Mrs Magdelene Ajani, when she led an inter-agency team comprising the NPA, Nigerian Customs (NCS) and the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) on an assessment tour of overtime cargoes at the ports.
The Lagos and Tin Can Island Port complexes and the terminals therein, including Ikorodu Lighter Terminal, have over the years been occupied with 3,200 Units of overtime cars and about 3,295 units of overtime containers, respectively, while the eastern ports have a combined total of 956 overtime containers.
This situation, apart from constraining terminal spaces required for seamless cargo handling operations in the ports, has contributed to the deterioration of port infrastructure, which are designed as transit locations as opposed to holding dead weight tonnages for years, which this age-long overtime cargo constitutes.
