NSC boss charged on Lagos port decongestion

The General Manager of the Kaduna Inland Dry Port, Rotimi Raimi-Hassan, has urged the new Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), Emmanuel Jime, to strengthen collaboration with stakeholders as a way of harnessing the benefits of dry ports.

Speaking at a media parley in Lagos, Raimi-Hassan also said the NSC boss should create a common working platform between the shipping companies and operators of the dry ports to decongest Lagos ports.

He stated that cargoes destined for the dry ports should have been made easier for collection and evacuation by rail to reduce cost by 50 per cent of present charges, as it costs an average of N1 million to move a containerised consignment from Lagos and Onne Ports to Kaduna.

Raimi-Hassan said the mode of receiving and evacuation of cargo places the ports on the same template with bonded terminals, which was not the vision and goal of President Muhammadu Buhari when he commissioned it in January 2018.

“We will like the new executive secretary of Nigerian Shippers Council to call managing directors of shipping companies, the operators and other stakeholders to roundtable discussions on how inland dry ports can operate successfully. We need maximum support of the Federal Government’s objective to decongest the seaports and to render services to the hinterland shippers.

“In addition to that, there is a need for him to address the teething problems of how we take delivery from the port, which we are being subjected to because this is a dry port that is supposed to evacuate cargoes en-mass from the mother ports.

According to him, the newly appointed chief executive officer of the Shippers’ Council can play a strategic role in helping all dry ports in the country to achieve issuance of through bills of laden in their names.

This, he said, would catalyse the formal designation of the dry ports as ports of destination for importation and ports of origin for exportation of many agricultural products like ginger from Kaduna and other states in its proximity.