Lagos Port Still a Bottleneck for Nigerian Economy

The road leading to the Lagos port, which handles nearly everything that Africa’s biggest economy imports, is one of the most congested in a megacity whose traffic jams are legendary.

Wide enough to accommodate only two lanes on either side, along it move the goods that Africa’s top crude producer uses its huge oil receipts to buy -- everything from designer wear to dried fish, champagne and shampoo, Reuters stated.

The Apapa port is also one of the biggest bottlenecks in an economy throttled by power cuts and institutional dysfunction.

Reforms to this behemoth by President Goodluck Jonathan and previous administrations brought huge improvements over the past decade, some shippers said, adding that bad roads and extortion by officials in a tangle of government agencies continue to pile up traffic and costs. That is a problem for foreign firms looking to cash in on the incipient consumer boom in Africa’s most populous nation, and Jonathan’s successor as president, former military ruler Muhammadu Buhari, will need to crack down hard if he wants to keep a reputation as a man with zero tolerance for graft. A Reuters trip to Apapa, a virtual city of piled up containers by a lagoon, took four hours past lines of fuel trucks. That was despite volumes being relatively low owing to a weaker naira and oil prices. Workers report much longer waits. Companies have to bring perishable goods through the port, where bureaucratic delays can mean a shipment spoiling. Privatising the port operators in 2006 eased congestion dramatically, and Finance Minister Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala in 2012 cut the number of government agencies allowed to inspect cargo.

“There were about 15 different agencies extorting money from importers, and each would do a separate inspection,” former presidential adviser Sylvester Monye told Reuters.

“Now we have seven, and the president introduced a regime that all the inspections must happen simultaneously.”

Importers however, said rule is not always followed, and those seven can still hold back shipments while they await bribes. A Reuters reporter saw a man in uniform hold up a truck for half an hour before the driver reluctantly handed over cash.

“They’ve all got a scam going, from the guy that wheels your trolley out to the senior customs officers,” says an official at container company at Apapa who declined to be named.

He added that Nigerian authorities inspect 70 per cent of cargo, compared with around five per cent in the European Union. A spokesman for the Nigeria Customs Service did not respond to a request for comment, but the head of customs at Apapa, Eporwei Edike recently to have said: “If we notice any irregularities anywhere, we tackle them immediately,” and that “we are not sparing erring officers.”

Monye said other improvements Jonathan introduced included making it a 24-hour operation instead of 9 to 5 and rebuilding the 30-year-old road with a foot of concrete underneath it.