By Okey Ibeke and Enyeribe Anyanwu

In The Begining

In 2006, right from the day AP Moller took over the operation of Apapa Container Terminal, the biggest container terminal in West Africa, and the second biggest in Africa, it did not leave anyone in doubt that it had a raw deal for Nigeria and users of its services. The first thing the Dutch company did on taking over the terminal was to slam astronomical tariffs increase on the port users.

The sharp and arbitrary increase hit the port users so hard as they were not expecting such tariffs increases so soon, especially after all the assurances of government, represented by NPA, that the concession would not increase the cost of port services. This action by the concessionaire was particularly shocking because it ran contrary to the concession agreement the company had just signed with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the federal government.

Few days before the handover of the port terminals to private operators, the then Managing Director of NPA, Chief Adebayo Sarumi, who presided over the entire port concession, had told the press that all the new terminal operators including AP Moller had agreed to use NPA cargo handling tariffs for their operations. “Concession agreement does not give the concessionaires or private terminal operators the right to review tariff rates, rather the present NPA cargo handling tariff is to be used by them. But if any of them wants an upward review of its charges, they must wait for the Transport Commission to be constituted to attend to their requests”, he had stressed.

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