Dantsoho: Reform has improved Nigerian ports, but it’s not yet uhuru
Maureen Aguta
The Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Dr Abubakar Dantsoho has said that the Nigerian ports have improved moderately in recent years in terms of infrastructure and equipment, compared to the state of the ports 20 years ago, before the 2006 port concession programme.
Speaking at the end of his tour of the Lagos ports on Wednesday, Dr Dantsoho, noted that the ports are yet to be where the government wants them to be in terms of infrastructure and equipment, saying achieving those goals is a major project of the Federal Government, adding that the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Alhaji Adegboyega Oyetola has been focusing on that at the national level.
His words: “As you can see, somehow, we have achieved part of the aim. In Apapa, we have companies, terminal operators like APMT, ABTL. Over here, we have Five Star Logistics and others and they are doing their best to improve. That does not mean that we have gotten to where we want to be or that we have achieved 100 per cent of the goal we set out to achieve at the beginning of the reform. We are looking to see how we can improve the relationship and integrate in a way that we can move faster.
“Because of that, government is trying to see how we will have electronic integration as soon as possible which is what we call a port community system which will advance into the National Single Window,” he said.
Dantsoho further disclosed that the government is looking to see how it could get the industry to become more organised and efficient so that it could leverage on Nigeria’s huge population to grow exponentially.
“God has blessed us with a very huge population which is almost 65 per cent or 70 per cent youths. Our capacity to buy which is purchasing power is bigger than most of the countries in West and Central Africa. That means we can import more for ourselves because we have a democracy that is very robust.”
The NPA MD disclosed that the Federal Government is doing the best it could to improve the port to international standards. “Right now we are almost getting there by starting the port modernisation project which is going to worth a lot of millions of Dollars. We are also dredging the channels and doing a lot as regards technology. People who have been here will testify that we are far better in terms of technology than most of the other agencies. We don’t do anything in NPA now without technology including the payment of our salaries. To that extent we are doing as much as we can to do better,” he said.