Speaking with journalists in Lagos recently, Managing Director of ICNL; Mr. Yusuf Ismail, said that the company has tendered its bidding for the concessioning of the Onitsha River Port, even as he expressed confidence that the company has what it takes to operate the port.
Ismail also said that as the first successful ICD operator in Nigeria, other operators of ICDs in all the geo-political zones of Nigeria have been coming to his company for advice on how to run ICD projects. According to him, one of the companies is the Edo Inland Container Depot. We participated in the bidding for concession of Onitsha River Port which we are waiting for the result. So any time from now the Federal Government will announce the winner. If we are lucky to win it, we are going to run the Onitsha River port too. What is the difference between the seaport and the dry port?”
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Speaking further on the operation of river ports in Nigeria, he said “if government wants it functional, they will call investors to come and invest in them and give them the guidelines. They should put policies in place and there should be a regulatory body that will make sure it works. So that is how it is going to work.
“Everything lies in government hands. Even the port we are looking at here in Apapa, Tin-Can and everywhere; if government wants it to work, it will work.
It wasn’t like this in the early 1990s and early 2000 before the ports were handed over to private investors,” he added.
That time, it took us 30, 40 days to take containers out of the port. But when the private investors came onboard, things changed for the better”, he added.
and then