THE Executive Secretary/CEO of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), Hassan Bello has lamented that most Nigerian port terminals operate like market places, with crowds of people clustering around containers and still transacting businesses manually. This is even as he singled out Ports & Terminal Multiservices Ltd (PTML) operated by Italian shipping line, Grimaldi, as the most digitalized port terminal in Nigeria.
Addressing maritime journalists in Lagos recently, Hassan Bello explained that the NSC wants the digitalization of the port processes to succeed. According to the NSC boss, “Digitalization will solve the problem of delay, revenue leakages and corruption. Once we digitalize, our ports will become competitive. We should never forget that we have competitors in West and Central Africa.
“We know that the ports of Apapa and Tin-Can are really tired and very difficult to maintain due to dredging issues and limited draft. This has meant that only smaller ships come to our ports. The bigger ships stay at Lome and cargoes are then trans-shipped with smaller vessels to our ports. This shouldn’t be. Nigeria is the number one economy, and such shipping arrangement should be the other way round.
“Now, with Lekki deep seaport coming up, everybody has started shivering because that port is 16 metres draft. It can accommodate ultra-large container vessels that will bring hundreds of container to our ports. With Lekki, Nigeria is now defining its role in the transport sector.
“Back to the digitalization of our ports, we have the score-card of every port terminal operator and shipping company. We are happy that some have made tremendous improvement. For example, at PTML terminal operated by Grimaldi, they are highly digitalized. If you go there, you won’t see people clustering over containers. Even the freight forwarders prefer going to that shipping company and that terminal. In our score-card, PTML/Grimaldi scored about 88 per cent. The only issue still left at PTML/Grimaldi is the issuance of Delivery Order which they are currently doing both manually and online. We want it to be solely online.
“So, if shipping companies like Grimaldi has 88 per cent, Ocean Network Express has 75 per cent, CMA-CGM has 63 per cent, it is worrisome to still see some shipping firms scoring 13 per cent in our digitalization score-card processes.
“For the seaport terminals, some are doing very well. I can say PTML again scored 92 per cent. BUA has 75 per cent because they have also digitalized their processes. Intels and the West African Container Terminal (WACT) follows with 71 and 70 per cent, respectively.
“For our port environment, it’s not clean at all. So many illegal things are happening there. Imagine seeing kiosks where engine oil are sold littering our ports environment. These things degrade the port environment, and we are bent on clearing all these things in collaboration with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA). Imagine food vendors littering our port corridors. That is why when a trailer is leaving the port with a container, they stop along the ports access roads to buy food or engine oil, thereby creating artificial traffic issues along the port corridors. A five minutes stop by a trailer along the port corridor will cause a lot of problems. We cannot have people selling engine oil along our port corridors. With rail linking our ports now, we expect most of our cargoes to be evacuated by rail very soon.
“On the e-call-up system set up by the NPA, we have to support it. We have told the truckers that it will work. When it first started, it was working. But we know some people don’t want it to work because they profit from the chaos and confusion that exists along the port corridor. We must not allow these elements to derail this e-call-up system. We have to rally around this novel idea to ensure it works.”
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