Nigeria’s port concessionaires, tasked with managing daily terminal operations, cargo handling, and facility development, are asking for notable state investment in multimodal transport options to hasten cargo evacuation and solve port congestion.
“The future is to create means and ways to evacuate cargo, not just by truck, which has for a very long time been the only way to evacuate cargo from the port and get cargo inside the port, but also use alternative means,” Koen De Backker, chief executive officer of APM Terminals Nigeria, the country’s largest terminal operator, told the Nigerian Economic Summit in Abuja.
He said that the constraint of trucking containers keeps them in the terminals longer than necessary, proposing “waterway” and rail solutions like barging.
“We are developing quite some barging projects, and we are in a very close discussion with the National Railways to also gate out cargo and gate in cargo into the terminals via those means of transport,” he said.
Read also: APM Terminals promises 24-hour barge operations in Q4
He cited APM Terminals’ logistics centre in the Ibadan area, where export cargo is consolidated, stuffed into containers and moved by rail into the terminal, as an example of how alternative transport links can support cargo flows.
APM Terminals operates an inland cargo connection linked to the Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) freight yard in Moniya, Ibadan, Oyo State. A standard-gauge container freight service runs directly to and from APM Terminals Apapa in Lagos three times a week. It also operates a terminal in Onne.
Read also: APM Terminals presses for quicker rollout of Nigeria’s green port projects
De Backker said Nigeria needs to modernise its ageing port infrastructure and introduce new technology, specialised expertise and investments essential to increasing capacity and efficiency.
“It’s time for new investments to take place,” he said. “The ports and terminals have been built on very old infrastructure, infrastructure that was built just before independence, Today, a modern port will be able to handle a lot more cargo.”
De Backker said Nigeria should embrace better private-public partnerships in port operations to “open it up to a level of development that would make it a lot easier for the cargo to move in and move out of those ports.”
“It’s about professionalising infrastructure, modernising, and getting experts in this,” he said.
APM Terminals, working with the Nigerian Customs Service, deployed cargo scanners to reduce sole reliance on physical examinations, De Baccker said this contributed to reducing import container dwell time from 18 to 14 days in one case.
Kashim Shettima, Nigeria’s vice president, delivering President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s address, said the government would continue efforts to ease regulatory burdens, strengthen transparency and policy predictability, and expand access to finance.
Bethel Olujobi is the Trade Correspondent at BusinessDay. He brings scarce insight into Nigeria's maritime policies and the changing currents of global commerce defining the country's position in international trade. Before this, he reported on foreign relations, migration and sports for BusinessDay. He holds a Bachelor's degree in Mass Communication, and is an alumni of the CNN Academy and the Financial Times News School. He is certified by Reuters and Google. He is based in Lagos, Nigeria. For pitches, email: [email protected]
