By Steve Agbota
Due to a long-running crisis bedeviling the nation’s seaports, Togo has overtaken Nigeria to become the maritime hub in West and Central Africa.
Daily Sun learnt that Togo overtaken Nigeria to become leading port in West Africa due to reforms implemented at the port of Lome as Nigerian ports are still struggling to achieve efficiency.
As result of the reforms, Togo recorded 1,725,520 Twenty Foot Equivalent (TUEs) cargo throughput in 2020 while Nigeria recorded 1,528, 520 TUEs in the same year, according United Nation’s report. This indicates that Nigeria lost over 196750 TUEs or 30 per cent of its container traffic to Lome Port due to lingering congestion and the poor quality of its services.
Today, Nigerian Ports is still synonymous with congestion, gridlock, low draught and ship turnaround is till relatively inefficient while the port of Lome is more efficient in terms of cargo turnaround and with over 16 meters draught that can accommodate larger vessels while none of Nigerian seaports draught can go beyond 13 meters after dredging.
As result of these challenges, Lome Port, in Togo, is now the region’s busiest port, and cargo destined for Nigeria is increasingly offloaded or shipped via smaller vessels from ports in Ghana, Ivory Coast, Cameroon and Congo-Brazzaville.
“Nigeria is definitely behind the curve. What is happening in Lagos, I can’t recall seeing anything like it anywhere in the world,” said senior analyst at Dynamar, Darron Wadey
Meanwhile, stakeholders said the nation’s loss has proven to be Togo’s gain as the small West African nation doubles down on reform and investment plans to transform itself into a pivotal transit hub in the Gulf of Guinea.
A former Director of Operations at the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Captain Warredi Enisuoh, said the reforms Togo took, includes but not limited to redesigning of the ports to take into account Transshipment Hub in mind and preparing the ports for future ship designs in terms of size thereby deepening their channels to accommodate bigger ships. He said part of the reforms is seamless processes by cutting down and bringing to one platform all the agency required in the process, improved their hinterland connectivity with their neighbors thereby attracting a lot of Transshipment cargoes and invested in professional training.
“If you look at this report, you will see that the containers going to Togo was less than Nigeria as at 2010. See the steady rise as they embarked on automation as well. Even though the number of containers was rising for Togo astronomically.
“The number of container ships calling Togo in 2018 and 2019 were relatively, less! It only tells me that the ships were relatively bigger. In 2020, they had bigger and more container ships calling Togo than Nigeria. Investors are very confident now, that Togo and its improved efficiency is definitely a hub.
