The need for Nigeria to eliminate impediments to trade facilitation on major highways was the plea by stakeholders at the Road Governance Caravan organised by the United States Agency for International Development in Nigeria (USAID/Nigeria) for states on Lagos – Kano – Jibiya (LAKAJI) corridor.
Speaking at the caravan in Abeokuta, Kayode Ademolake, permanent secretary, ministry of works in Ogun State, noted that impediments must be removed for trade facilitation to reduce the cost and time of moving goods and services, which according to him, will impact positively on reducing poverty on the corridor and the country.
“Economic development of Nigeria is expansive and all challenges and encumbrances must be removed to improve trade,” he said.
In 2013, USAID conducted a baseline study on the LAKAJI corridor, which revealed that it costs over $3,000 and takes approximately 12.5 days to send a 20-foot container from Jibiya (border town in Katsina State) to Lagos, while it costs nearly $5,000 and takes approximately 19.5 days to move a 20-foot container from the Lagos port to Jibiya.
The cost and time, according to the report, were the highest when compared with similar corridors between two different countries in West Africa and states in the US.
The high cost to transport goods along the corridor is largely due to the lengthy clearance time and associated costs at the port with series of bottlenecks and fines along the expressway.
Noel Kosonu, transport specialist, West Africa Borderless Allianc, posited that the preponderance of non-trade barriers was responsible for the low level of economic development and integration in Africa, adding that economic integration in Africa was at less than 11 percent when compared with over 71 percent in Europe and 53 percent in Asia.
According to Kosonu, Nigeria is losing out from serving neighbouring landlocked countries in West Africa due to its high cost and time of moving goods.
Describing the Lome – Ouagadougou corridor as the most competitive corridor in the West African sub-region, he said landlocked countries like Niger Republic and Burkina Faso were routing their goods to be moved through Togo because the country had drastically reduced the number of checkpoints, hence movement of goods through the country was faster and at a lower cost.
Leading agricultural producers, traders, transporters, and officials from Federal Road Safety Corps, Nigeria Customs Service and financiers at the caravan proposed and advocated for systemic and practical improvements to the movement of goods, transport, capital, and services across the country.
Development of LAKAJI Corridor as a multimodal major trade route in Nigeria is an initiative of USAID/NIGERIA through the Nigeria Expanded Trade and Transport (NEXTT) project which is designed to promote inclusive economic growth through an integrated approach to trade and transport competitiveness.
