The story goes on like this,
Anyone who knew Nigerian seaports very well before now and has paid a visit to the ports in recent time, will no doubt, find the sudden transformation of the ports truly amazing.
There is now unprecedented efficiency, handling plants and equipments are readily available, while insecurity of cargoes is now a thing of the past.
The transformation came less than two years after terminal operations at the ports were concessioned to private operators, mostly Nigerian-owned companies and a few international terminal operators, like APM Terminals which operates over 50 terminals spread across the United States of America, Europe, Asia, Middle East and Africa.
Since then, the ports have witnessed tremendous investment in the areas of infrastructure and superstructure, improved lighting systems, improved security, elimination of vessel queues, reduction of sharp and corrupt practices, elimination of heavy human traffic, improved security, better road networks inside the ports, and so on.
Indeed, analysts are of the opinion that the amount of investment in the ports in the last two years is about ten times the amount of investment in the same port system between 1960 and 2005.
This is despite the 7 per cent port development surcharge that NPA was collecting (and is still collecting!) from importers. No one has yet accounted for the huge sums of money, running into several billions of naira, collected as port development surcharge.
The last time government made any serious investment in the port system was in 1979 when Tincan Island Port was built, and that was almost 30 years ago.
Against this background, one wonders why despite all these and the unprecedented level of investment, there is so much noise and hullabaloo about the activities of the concessionaires.
If the critics of the concessionaires are sincere, they will recall that before the concession, Nigerian Ports had attained the apogee of inefficiency.
Nigerian-bound cargoes were being diverted to ports of neighbouring countries, especially the port of Cotonou in Benin Republic.
The shipping lines were given good reasons to shun our port as it took an average of 30 days to berth, after arriving Nigerian waters.
There was vessel queue on our waters similar to the logjams on Lagos roads. Shipowners found this highly unacceptable.
Time is money in shipping because, every second counts as you cannot afford to shut down. The longer they waited out without berthing, the more expenses they bore.
So the alternative was to utilise the ports of neighboring countries and this was done with the active support of many Nigerian importers and their agents, who also preferred to use ports outside Nigeria to avoid the plethora of charges (mostly unreceipted) that characterised our port system.
Such importers and their agents ended up smuggling their goods into Nigeria through the land borders, thereby robbing the government of its legitimate revenue.
Those shipping lines that managed to come to Nigerian ports did so at a greater cost to the nation's economy. They came together under a cartel known as the Europe West African Trade Agreement (EWATA), for the sole purpose of imposing the notorious "congestion surcharge" on our ports.
This surcharge amounted to a whopping $200 million per annum. The coming of the port concessionaires has since saved the Nigerian economy this colossal amount.
The maritime labour especially dockworkers did not fare any better in the pre-concession era.
Industry operators and observers all witnessed the terror unleashed on the system, by a cabal of maritime labour leaders who were feeding fat under a confused system. All the 12,000 dockworkers that were working in the ports during that era were casual workers. None of them had an employer or a condition of service. A lot of people still remember what was known as "akugbe" of those days.
