₦airaland Forum

Nigeria’s economy is highly dependent on imports, despite the ambitious rhetoric and best efforts of successive governments.

But imports carry a consistently high cost for businesses bringing in shipments to Africa’s most populous country. Thanks to decades of inefficiency, processes at Nigeria’s main port are hamstrung by excessive bureaucracy and corruption, driving up costs.

Research shared with Quartz by SBM Intel, a Lagos-based geopolitics and economics intelligence firm, details just how pricey imports into Nigeria are compared to other key African ports. For its analysis, SBM tracked shipments coming into ports in Nigeria, South Africa, and Ghana from the European Union zone over a three-month period last year.

In particular, local transport costs in Lagos are more than seven times higher than in Tema and Durban, largely thanks to perpetual congestion at the Apapa port. Poor access roads and long waiting times at the port’s entrance often cause backups of container-laden trucks stretching 10km (6 miles), resulting in traffic jams on the city’s major highways and bridges.

The congestion and inefficiency comes at a significant price for Nigeria’s economy. After implementing reforms at its port in Lome, Togo has seen container traffic rise more than three-fold since 2013. It now surpasses Lagos as the leading port by container traffic in West Africa.

The Nigerian government has attempted reforms at the Apapa port, including mandating 24-hour operations and attempting to clamp down on entrenched bribery, but a lack of enforcement has meant those measures have not fully taken hold.

The long-term effect is that import costs into Nigeria will likely remain expensive from anywhere in the world. While SBM Intel’s data only tracked imports from European Union countries, shipping costs from the US to Nigeria are similarly expensive. While Nigeria is closer to New York than South Africa is in terms of nautical miles, it costs nearly twice as much for someone to ship a package from New York to Lagos than to Cape Town.

Source: https://qz.com/africa/1813353/import-costs-into-lagos-surpass-ghana-south-africa/


Front page: Lalasticlala

The Nigerian government has attempted reforms at the Apapa port, including mandating 24-hour operations and attempting to clamp down on entrenched bribery

Osinbajo executive orders failed to do anything substantial. Nigeria drags its feet befire doing anything like improving rail transport to ports. Even after the government builds more ports and rails they still have to run it effectively or they'll be back to square one.

 

It now surpasses Lagos as the leading port by container traffic in West Africa.

Its pretty impressive how they do more with less.

Very expensive........ With high corruption activities on the port.....



Being the only functional and most used port in Nigeria.. This is expected as there is no comparison and competition with any other port...


Waiting for other states to have their ports working....

Talk about rank incompetence! And to think this is the same federal government that so many Nigerians consider the right organ to address all and every problem in their lives: it's always some nonsense about how "Government should blah blah blah", even though the self-same government can't even keep the main roads to its busiest port in proper working order. I won't even get started on the other set of pathetic commenters who are always quick to blame alleged conspiracies by "the white man" for their own insistence on repeatedly electing "leaders" who can't even tie their own shoelaces straight ...

Nigeria will only ever start to march down the road to real progress when the majority of Nigerians stop thinking about politics in terms of "national cake" and "juicy appointments" to be shared out by tribe and religion, and turn their focus instead to competence, ideology and track records; unfortunately, right now it looks like that will never happen.

Even when you implement things that work in other countries in Nigeria, they don't work.

Let's keep running round in circles until we have common sense

SoNature:
Even when you implement things that work in other countries in Nigeria, they don't work.

Let's keep running round in circles until we have common sense

Nobody is fired for failing. The executive order not being implemented is an example. It's either incompetence or insubordination that stops them.