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Nigeria’s container traffic has declined by 6.85 per cent to 1.57 million twenty-equivalent units, compared to 1.68 million TEUs handled in the previous year. This was disclosed in the port performance report presented at the quarterly meeting of the Nigerian Port Consultative Council.
According to the report which was presented in Lagos recently, vessels that called at the Nigerian ports dropped by 4.5 per cent to 3,778 in 2023 from 3,957 vessels in the prior year. Experts attributed this decrease in the country’s container traffic to the lingering dollar scarcity, which has led to a significant depreciation of the naira. In June, the Central Bank of Nigeria unified the various forex market segments, causing the naira to weaken further.
The report further said that cargo throughput (excluding crude oil) also dropped by 6.4 per cent to 70.47 million metric tonnes during the period under review instead of the 75.27 million metric tonnes recorded in 2022. However, there was a slight increase in cargo volume that came into the country’s ports to 122.87 million tonnes against 120.37 million tonnes in 2022, showing an increase of 2.1 per cent.
Container traffic during the period under review stood at 1,566,162 TEUs, showing a decrease of 6.8 per cent from 1,681,328 TEUs handled in 2022. Further analysis of container traffic revealed that import container traffic accounted for 55.85 per cent with 874,683 TEUs, while export container traffic stood at 684,586 TEUs, representing 43.71 per cent of total container traffic. It is noted that empty containers accounted for about 80 per cent of total export container traffic.
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The average turn-around time of vessels was 4.0 days, compared with 5.1 days in 2022. It is, however, worth noting that the significant improvement in average turn-around time was brought about by the impact of Lekki Deep Seaport, which achieved a turn-around of only one day. The increase in gross registered tonnage despite a drop in the number of vessel calls revealed berthing of bigger vessels, especially at Lekki Port, where the average GRT of the vessel is 45,185 compared to Apapa with 30, 565 GRT. This further gives credence to the importance of a deep sea to the Nigerian Maritime or port development, the report added.
