By Godfrey Bivbere & Sharon Obiakor

THE Ijaw Youth Council, IYC, have accused those attributing the lull in business at Warri port to insecurity along the route to the port as looking for excuse to justify neglect of the port.

President of the IYC, Eric Omare, who spoke to Vanguard Maritime Report on the issue, said that there are a lot of marine activities taking place currently in Warri axis and that these operators were not complaining about the security situation.

He wondered why the issue of security will always be brought up every time Warri port is mentioned.

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In his words, “Those allegations are deliberately being promoted by those who do not want the Warri port to see the light of the day. There is no part of the country that does not have security issues and if there are isolated places or security threat along the waterways is not a basis to say that vessels cannot come to the Warri port from Lagos.
“In spite of all those security challenges, there are marine operations going on very well in all these areas. There are two oil-exporting terminals, all the people operating from Warri. If you need to go to the Forcados terminal you need to pass through the waterways, so why is that when it is time for vessels that are carrying cargo from abroad or from Lagos; when it is time for them to come there will be problems.

“But the same waterways, vessels that are bringing oil facilities like refined petroleum products they come to through that route every day to discharge petroleum products; so why is it that those ones are working but when it comes to the issue of bringing cargo they will bring up the issue of insecurity.

In summary, those allegations are not correct. Insecurity is not a threat in using the Warri port. Warri port is secured; the waterways to Warri port is secured.”
However, speaking on the use of Warri port recently, Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, Hadiza Bala Usman said the main problem with Warri port is the depth of the channel leading to it which currently stands at seven metres.

She blamed the presence of the pipeline belonging to the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC to the inability of the Authority to dredge the channel to below 10 metres.

She also noted that the current development in shipbuilding has seen the emergence of bigger vessels requires depth of more than 13 meters, the heights in any of the government control ports presently.

Vanguard