If there is any place that shows the commercial devastation taking place in Apapa, it is the Apapa Mall. It is fast becoming a “ghost mall” as more than half of the shops in the mall have closed down. Even the Cinemas have closed shop. Only few shops are remaining. It is a testimony to what has gone wrong with Apapa, which could be described as the nation’s most valuable entry point for goods into the country. Apapa hosts the Lagos Port Complex managed by the Nigeria Ports Authority. It currently has five different terminals operated by private sector terminal operators whose efforts to improve efficiencies at the ports have been rubbished by the very bad state of Apapa roads.
The Apapa Ports complex, as it is popularly referred to, handles more than 90 percent of the goods imported into the country. The Apapa ports make money by all standards. Managing Director of the Ports Authority, Hadiza Usman just projected recently that the target is to make N250 billion in revenues this year from activities at the Ports. Even though, there is no estimate, I suspect this revenue will be more than enough to repair all the roads in Apapa. But despite being such a big money spinner, Apapa is in a sorry state, which has forced many residents in the once cherished neighbourhood to relocate to other parts of Lagos. For those left behind, it has become a daily living nightmare.
After years of neglect, Apapa is looking like a town that has suffered from a massive bombing campaign. The roads are not only bad but they are practically impassable. Magnanimously, Dangote Cement and Flour Mills Nigeria have volunteered to repair the most critical potions of the road with direct access to the port. However, the federal government’s inability to compliment what both companies are doing with proper traffic management options, risk jeopardising their efforts or prolonging the repair project.
In the last few weeks, Apapa has been a greater hell. Hundreds of trucks have taken over the major roads and bridges leading into and out of the ports creating a standstill for those who intend to go to the Ports and for those who want to leave the ports or Apapa. Operators at the ports have told BusinessDay of how thousands of containers are now trapped at the ports. This is because the trucks that have already loaded their containers cannot leave and so those that want to go into the ports and take out their goods cannot go in.
For the first time in 11 years, a queue of ships is said to be building up on the high seas as those ahead of them cannot unload their cargo. It is becoming a desperate situation with significant implications for the Nigerian economy. For operators at the ports, they are already feeling the impact. Demurrage costs are piling up as their containers are trapped at the Ports and the terminal operators are not willing to write off the cost of the containers over staying at their terminals. Of course the shippers are also complaining. The expected immediate impact is that the cost of shipping goods into the country will start rising fast. Shippers will have to charge premium to bring their goods into the country to cover the cost of a longer period to come into the country and go out.
There is also the risk that the country will soon start loosing traffic to Benin Republic and Ghana, two ports that have over years shown that they have better efficiencies than the Nigerian Ports. The expectation is that most importers will immediately start diverting their goods to the neighbouring ports if they cannot be assured that they can have their goods discharged timely in Lagos.
Manufacturers are also feeling the chaos at the ports as they beginning to wait for a longer period to have their raw materials come into their factories. This is not only increasing their cost of production but also exposing them to the risk having to shut down production totally if they do not get their stock of raw materials in on time. This is also a vulnerable period for manufacturers. They are just recovering from a period in which they have struggled to access foreign exchange, which forced many of them to operate below their nameplate capacities. Just when they are overcoming their foreign exchange challenges and clear signs are showing of a pick-up in manufacturing activities, they are now faced with a new challenge of not being able to take delivery of their imported raw materials. On the average instead of a trucks spending a few hours to go into the ports and pick up their goods and exit, they are now spending a minimum of four days trying to get into the Apapa Ports complex and a few more days trying to get out.
It is not clear why the government did not think it fit to make a clear alternative traffic plans into and out of a vital facility like the Apapa Ports when it knew that the repair will impact on how trucks move in and out. It is already known that the Apapa Ports have no railway evacuation routes, which is an anomaly on its own.
It was expected that the government would have thought of alternative routes for trucks and cars as soon as the road repairs started but that has not largely happened. Instead, they seem to have left everything to port users and residents to find their own way and this has created the present chaos noticed at the Ports, which sadly boiled over last week into the death of a truck driver and the burning of two bank buildings.
There have been several suggestions on what could be done to decongest the current chaos in Apapa. The first obvious solution is to have a parking bay somewhere on the Lagos to Ibadan express way or any other place where enough large parking spaces can be found. The trucks, most of which are coming to the Ports to load fuel, can park their trucks at this bay and then they can be called only when they are ready to load, to start driving to the ports.
There is also the other suggestion that since Apapa is surrounded by water, the goods can be barged from the Apapa ports to places like Ikorodu and other holding bays outside the Apapa enclosure, where the trucks can pick them up without coming to Apapa.
The current situation in Apapa is unsustainable. In fact, there is the other fear that with the way that the trucks have turned the bridges leading into Apapa into a permanent packing lots, by the time the road repairs are completed in a year’s time, the bridges would have become structurally weak, that the government would have to start looking for a way to repair them and that will create the chaos all over again.
For now, the impact of the Apapa repairs seem not to have been well thought out and the government needs to act fast because it is the economy that is at stake. The economy is just too fragile currently to be subjected to this crisis. The urgency with which the government handled the repairs of the Abuja runway, could also be applied to Apapa. It is that important considering that the Abuja airport rakes in just a fraction of what Apapa brings in as revenues on a yearly basis. Acting President Yemi Osinbajo has signed an executive order for a 24-hour ports operation. But that definitely is now as good as the paper it was written on and nothing more unless the Apapa chaos is resolved.
Anthony Osae-Brown
