Nigeria’s seaport leading concessionaire, APM Terminals (APMT) has been condemned? by agents and freight forwarders operating at the Apapa Port for alleged deliberate plan to hinder importation businesses at the port.
Agents, who spoke to LEADERSHIP at the port said that the terminal operator’s lackadaisical approach to positioning of containers for examination was a deliberately cut-out plan to delay import businesses of Nigerians.
As at 10am on Tuesday morning, when our correspondent visited the Apapa Port, APMT was yet to begin positioning of containers for examination. Agents said the job should have been done during the night, so that examination could begin in earnest in the morning.
“Positioning of containers for examination is done at night so that in the morning, examination can start. This was the situation before. After the examination, a suspected container is booked again with N6,000 and more than 70 per cent of containers are suspected. APMT knows what it is doing. It is deliberately frustrating agents and businesses of importers,” said Bayo Adegbenla, a registered customs agent.
It was also learnt from insider sources that the containers to be positioned that morning would not be attended to until the following day.
An insider (a staff of APMT) said:- “Too many rules have spoilt this business. By this time before, you would see agents here working on their containers. Look at your timepiece now, do you see any agent here?”
Attempts by our correspondent to speak to the APMT’s spokesman were stalled at the gate by the company’s security. Our correspondent was referred back to the company’s office in Apapa, from where he was earlier referred to the company’s office inside Apapa Port complex
Speaking e recently at a maritime forum in Lagos, chairman of the freight forwarding trade group of the Nigeria Chamber of Commerce and Industry(NCCI), Julie Ogboru said: “What gives me the greatest concern is that the concessionaire has taken after the corruptible practices it met here. What it is doing to us in Nigeria, it can never attempt to do it in its home country or even in Cotonou if it were to be given a port to manage there.
“We expect the concessionaires to come here and operate in equity. This is why the ports were leased out to private managers in the first place. But things are worse now.”