Rep blames shipping lines, concessionaire for gridlock on Apapa port

A member of the House of Representatives, Rep. Leke Abejide on Monday accused shipping lines and terminal operators of being responsible for the perennial gridlock experienced in accessing the Apapa Port and the inefficiencies at the port.

Rep. Abejide made the accusation while speaking with House correspondents in Abuja, about the tricks played by the foreign shipping lines and their Nigerian partners to defraud and frustrate importers as well as sabotaging the smooth running of the ports in Lagos.

Specifically, the House member fingered MAERSKLINE/APMT for being behind the nightmare that importers and port users are passing through for failing to fix its server that broke down for six weeks, resulting to the chaotic scene on the Apapa Expressway which is the main access to the port.

According to him, while MAERSK which is a foreign shipping line gives the impression that its operations are independent, investigations have revealed otherwise;

that the shipping line and A.P.MOLLER TERMINALS (APMT) which is the concessionaire of the Apapa Port use the same server as importers who had containers with the shipping firm couldn’t evacuate such containers during the period the server collapsed.

The lawmaker further revealed that the port operators charge importers exorbitant fees for services not offered thereby, contributing to the congestion of the port.

“Normally, the shipping companies give importers 14-30 days to clear their containers and return the empty containers to their terminal inside the port or their designated empty container bay also within the perimeter of the port.

“What the shipping lines ought to have done is to locate their empty containers bay a minimum of 100 kilometres away from the port to make it accessible for trucks to drop easily and come back to load from the port.

“However, because they don’t want to spend money, they asked importers/agents to bring these empty containers to inaccessible place making the trucks line up with containers on them.

“The worst thing is these shipping lines which refused to do the right thing by locating their empty containers bay outside the port area, will be calculating N21, 400 per day on those containers on top trucks.

In this way, they are using the trucks of the agents/importers as warehouses and at the same time charging the same importer/agent for not returning the empty containers,” Rep. Abejide asserted.

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He added that even after the empty containers have been received by the shipping firms and the empty interchange report collected, they doctor their books to indicate that the importers/agents are still indebted to them.

The House member, who represents Yagba West, Yagba East/Mopamuro Federal Constituency of Kogi state reiterated that sometimes, the shipping lines bill importers/agents as much as N240 million for empty containers already in their possession.

“These shipping lines are hypocrites, who behave as if they do not know the challenges at the port, when they are part and parcel of the problem.

Just because they think anything goes in Nigeria, they packaged all what is supposed to be their responsibilities and transfer them to the unsuspecting importers/agents as detentions.

“Furthermore, some of the shipping lines in recent time place nearly all their customers on ‘no more business.’ MAERSKLINE is culpable of this.

They abandon containers in their sister company terminal which is APMT. At the end, they charge exorbitantly on demurrage for actions they deliberately caused

“A worse scenario is that some of these shipping companies charge as high as N2 million to release just one bill of landing. It is that bad.

Nigerian businesses are in trouble in the hands of these shipping lines and terminal operators and it seems the federal government is unaware.

It also seems the Nigerian Shippers Council and the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria (MAN) are oblivious of the situation,” he added.