By Godfrey Bivbere, Godwin Oritse & Favour John

Former Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Chief Adebayo Sarumi, has scored the Lagos port low saying that the ports have failed

Sarumi who reiterated this recently in Lagos at the launch of the new look journal of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Nigerian Ports Today, stressed that the channel was not today’s channel which should be a minimum of 14.5.

AChannels today should be a minimum of 14.5, but the maximum the Lagos port can get to is 12.5. For regional connection(within Africa), this channel is not bad. But for international connection, it is too low. Secondly, the berths are old because they were built in 1977.

Ship technology of today goes for longer berths. ” Thirdly, they are built at the edge of the city which has resulted in the encroachment of the city traffic. This also does not allow people to discharge and load cargoes easily.

As a matter of fact, it takes you about two days to approach the port, and three days to get out of the port. These are not the features of a port that is supposed to be serving the international shipping community.

Due to these, we all are paying more for our imports. Our exports are therefore not going to be competitive in the international market Chief Sarumi stated “.

He therefore recommended that new channels be opened, saying We should move to new locations where the channels are deeper, populations are less and facilities are very conducive for the establishment of brand new deep sea ports.

Speaking in similar same vein, Mallam Bello Gwandu asserted that the present ports in the country are too archaic. Some of them, he said, were not well designed to cope with the present-day volume of cargoes that come into the country.

Identifying public/private sector partnership as the key to the future of the ports, Gwandu rated the port concession as just a scratch of the surface. What should also be done , according to him, is to  attract international companies to come into the country to build sea ports with their own money. That way, he said, Nigeria will be attracting a lot of Foreign direct investment.