In the euphoria of having successfully prosecuted the fratricidal civil war that ended in January 1970 without any external borrowing, the victorious regime of Yakubu Gowon embarked on a grand reconstruction of the damaged and limited infrastructure in the country. Cement was the major instrument for the post-war reconstruction, with the federal government duly entering into several contracts for the massive importation of the commodity.
The contract spree led to arrangements for the importation of over 20 million tonnes of cement, 16 million tonnes of which were for the Ministry of Defence alone. This huge consignment was supposed to be delivered within 12 months. At the time, the combined annual cargo-handling capacity of all the ports was just 6.5 million tonnes of general cargo. With up to 455 ships—about 300 of them laden with cement—arriving within a short period, the chaos that resulted was monumental.
Ships had to wait for an average of 180 days, that is, six months, before they could secure berthing space and discharge their consignments. And Nigeria paid dearly for it. The massive port congestion resulted in the imposition of freight surcharges ranging from 30 to 100 percent. Demurrage on the vessels averaged $4,100 per day for each ship for delays in excess of 10 days. If ships had to wait for up to six months before berthing, and if as many as 455 vessels were queuing for berthing space at one point during the congestion, one can only imagine the humongous costs in foreign currency that Nigeria incurred at the time.
But as the country was awash with petrodollars, the federal government bore the costs without the proverbial batting of an eyelid. It was never determined or revealed how much Nigeria lost to the fiasco. All the ship and cargo congestion occurred at Apapa Port, which was the destination for most of the vessels. However, the military government of the time had seen enough to realise that relying on a single port tucked in one corner of a country with an 853-kilometre coastline was a recipe for chaos and nightmare.
In its Second National Development Plan of 1970–1974, the government unveiled a comprehensive plan to rehabilitate existing ports and build new ones across Nigeria’s expansive coastline. The plan acknowledged the illogicality of utilising only one seaport to conduct international trade in a country with such a vast coastline. Between the 1970–1974 Second National Development Plan and the third plan of 1975–1980, a network of new ultra-modern ports was built. Apart from Tin Can Island Port, which became operational in 1977, new facilities were developed in Warri, Calabar, and Port Harcourt ports.
Unfortunately, all Nigeria’s ports are located inland, requiring extensive navigation through river channels for vessels to access berthing facilities. Here, Lagos ports enjoy a significant advantage over others. While the distance to Lagos ports from the fairway buoy is just 7.4 kilometres, that of Warri is 96 kilometres, Calabar is 83 kilometres, and Port Harcourt Port is 76 kilometres. Invariably, each port requires extensive pilotage services to guide ships to their berths.
Given these distances, the channels require regular maintenance dredging to sustain the advertised depth. Unfortunately, while the channels to Apapa and Tin Can Island ports are dredged frequently, those outside Lagos have been allowed to silt up, severely hampering access for larger ships. Herein lies the sticking point. The limited depth of channels in other ports has made Lagos ports the default destination for shipping services, regardless of the final destination of the consignments.
During his state visit to Britain, President Bola Tinubu secured a deal with the United Kingdom for the rehabilitation of Lagos ports—Apapa and Tin Can Island. The deal is valued at £746 million (N1.36 trillion) to redevelop and modernise the two principal ports. Ordinarily, this is a welcome development, especially as Apapa Port, the oldest of them all, is due for an upgrade. However, as the two Lagos ports have long dominated ship and cargo traffic in Nigeria, they share a common problem—persistent inefficiencies in cargo delivery processes and intermittent port congestion. These issues stem from cumbersome cargo-clearing procedures that have made the ports less competitive than those in neighbouring countries, especially Benin, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire.
Every cycle of port congestion—often avoidable—imposes an additional burden on shippers through freight surcharges and demurrage charges on vessels. These costs are inevitably passed on to consumers.
While port congestion has become a persistent feature of Nigeria’s ports, experts have long advocated for the decentralisation of port services to other regions of the country. This thinking inspired the Ibom Deep Seaport project by the Akwa Ibom State Government. The immediate reaction of operators in the port industry to the UK deal is that part of the £746 million loan could have been channelled into completing the Ibom Deep Seaport and dredging the channels to the Delta ports of Warri, Koko, and Sapele, as well as Port Harcourt Port.
When the deal with Britain is implemented, patronage of Apapa and Tin Can Island ports by shippers will increase further. Consequently, utilisation of ports outside Lagos will diminish even more, and congestion will remain a recurring feature of the already overburdened Lagos ports.
If the military government recognised the wisdom of building new ports across Nigeria’s vast coastline, it is difficult to understand why President Tinubu appears to favour Lagos as the primary hub for international trade. In this day and age, pragmatism—rather than politics or primordial considerations—should be the determining factor in major economic decisions.