Poor planning and lack of foresight by successive governments is responsible for the absence of a rail line out of the Tin-Can Island Port (TICP) in Lagos, the nation’s second busiest port facility.
This critical flaw has resulted in billions of naira in revenue and man-hour losses, as a consequence of gridlock lasting several hours per day, suffered by goods and commuters in passage by road over the years.
The Tin-Can Island port was hurriedly constructed to ease congestion in Apapa Port, in the era of the famous huge rush of Ocean liners, described as the ‘Cement Armada’ bringing in cement and other building materials in 1970s, which was a major construction stage in the nation’s history.
Much of the country’s existing roads, bridges and other such infrastructure were built in that era.
The Tin-Can port facility designers failed to input a rail system, while the nation’s regulators let the flaw pass without correction, subjecting cargo throughput to and from the facility to the bottlenecks as a result of 100 percent haulage by road.
A source close to the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) management, who pleaded anonymity, said there has always been the intent to connect the Tin-Can Island Port to the national rail grid, explaining that this was thwarted by the lack of a ‘last-mile’ rail line, which somehow never got constructed.
The source further disclosed the Federal Government consequently plans to concession rail operations, which have not been effectively managed by the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) to a US-based company, General Electric, which has a track record in rail management.
Part of the concession agreement, the source said, would involve connecting all Nigeria’s seaports to the national rail grid, to ease cargo movement.
Tony Anakebe, managing director of Gold-Link Investment Limited, who gave insight to the building of the Tin-Can Port, observes that the port, which was originally meant to handle Roll-on- Roll-off cargo (vehicles) and metallic bulk cargo, such as iron rods, with marginal containerised cargoes, is today the second largest seaport in Nigeria and a major container through-put channel.
“The developers were short-sighted, such that they failed to factor in population and demand growth, which is affecting the port today. Apart from the fact that there is no rail track near the port, except through Apapa, the problem of Tin-Can began after the alleged conversion of the old truck parks to major container terminals, during port concession,” Anakebe disclosed.
The cargo throughput at the Tin-Can Port before concession, according to him, was about 40,000 metric tonnes, and this volume has more than doubled to over 80,000 metric tonnes, making the road infrastructure around the port inadequate to handle the volume of cargo.
Hadiza Bala Usman, managing director of NPA, who has shown commitment to using effective intermodal transport systems to move cargoes from the nation’s seaports, said the NPA under her management, is keen to prioritise the movement of cargo by rail.
Usman disclosed that the NPA has opened discussion with General Electric (GE) on a proposal to design and prioritise a rail network linking the ports to the hinterland, with Lagos as the take-off point. She further said the Federal Ministry of Transport needs to provide clear timelines and percentages of cargoes that should be moved through the different modes of transportation, including inland waters, roads and rail.
“We need to determine the percentages to be apportioned to a particular transportation model because all cargoes cannot be moved by road. For instance, we need to determine that 30 percent of our cargoes must go through the rail and commit about three to four years timeline and deploy the necessary resources to building the needed infrastructure to achieve this,” Usman added.
Adamu Biu, former executive secretary of Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), said recently in forum in Lagos, that it is necessary to connect the Tin-Can Island port to the national rail network. He stated that the current state of the port access roads make it difficult to move cargoes out of the port.
“We have to consider using the rail system to move containers. In France for instance, the railway system was incorporated into the port system, such that as the vessel berths in the seaside, cargo would be discharged directly from the ship into the rail without having to deal with trucks littering the roads around the port and this would reduce pressure on our roads,” Biu added.
Bui warned the Federal Government on the need to upgrade existing port infrastructure to improve on cargo movement.
John Groffen, Ambassador, Kingdom of the Netherlands, in a recent interview with BusinessDay, explained why Rotterdam Ports in the Netherlands is the leading Port in Europe.
“Rotterdam is our main port and a couple of other ports. We know that these ports can only survive and be competitive if they have a hinterland that they can export the products and services. What you want to do first, is to make sure there is infrastructure.
“So we have roads, railroads and waterways. All these are being used to make sure that people can export their goods efficiently. The more the hinterland is accessible, the more places you can supply. That is one of the reasons Rotterdam has become that big and this is what the customers want” he said.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
