THE Federal Government has ruled out hopes of entire automation of Nigerian seaports, saying the nation cannot afford to have machines replace humans due to her very large population. This is even as government said that aside the Single Window initiative, every other aspect of Nigerian ports operation will be manually managed.
Speaking in Lagos last week during a 1-Day national conference on fast-tracking port reforms with the theme: ‘Making Nigerian Seaports World Class’, the Honorable Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi stated that Nigeria cannot afford to follow the footsteps of world leading port, Port of Singapore, in the area of port automation due to her large population.
According to him, “people talk about automation, that it is the only way to turn our seaports to world class. I agree with that assertion but don’t think we will get to that point due to our about 170 million population. People need employment, so we cannot afford that.
“I was at port of Singapore, and was marveled at the level of automation there. If you stay three seconds at the gate, somebody will come out to ask you what you are doing there. Their seaport is run by just 10 young people. The port is highly automated.
“But Singapore has no population that is why they have no workers. That is why they depend on technology. That is why they can afford their entire port system to be automated. I was there and saw things for myself. If you drive in, you won’t see anybody. The only things you will see are machine’s picking and dropping cargoes. If you spend more than 30 minutes at the Singapore port, you will be arrested.
“There are just 10 young boys operating the entire Singapore Port from a small room via computers. The entire port is fully automated. No presence of any security agency’s like Police, Customs, and others.
“That is the kind of seaport we will like to get, but do you know what I told the Singaporean Authority; I said they can afford to have their port automated because they don’t have population. In Nigeria where we have very high population, about 170 million people, we cannot afford that.
“We cannot afford to allow machines take over the entire jobs people will do. We need efficiency at our ports, but we also need jobs for our people. We are going to combine technology and manual operation. That is the way we will be going. We cannot afford entirely automated ports due to our very large population.
“The Single Window we are putting in place will not be manual. It will be technology driven. But every other thing will be manual because we have a very large population that we need to employ. We cannot afford an automated port system like that of Singapore due to our population. They can decide to do that and not have to pay anybody because they don’t have population. We cannot do that. Technology will be combined with manual operation to ensure we have efficiency at our ports.”
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