By the time the ongoing construction work on the lekki port
in Lagos is completed and the facility put in use, the project will redefine
the way maritime business is conducted in the continent, particularly in the West
African sub-region
This project was conceived to address the in-bound container
deficit in the nation’s existing ports, estimated at about 600 presently. This port,
which is an intra- trade facility, would eventually become the hub for West
African. The 1.5 billion project will increase capacity in the first stage to
1.5 million container yearly graduating to 2.5 million and intimately 4.5
million in about 5 to 7 years of operation. This will make for the current
capacity deficit. Presently shippers who want to come to Nigeria do not have
the space and size of ships of about 2000TUs. As a result of this luck of
capacity, the bigger ships berth first in Europe or South African, the small
ones feed from them down to Nigeria. To address this, the dredging company
would dredge 16 meters to enable ships with 8,000 to 10,000TUs container come in.
This means that shipping companies can go from port to port to drop as much
goods and then move on that number one,
This will bring the cost of shipping down, because shipping
cost is not just the size of the goods but also the fuel. So, when the size of
the ship for instance goes up four times, the fuel consumption does not go up
four times. Only goes up 50% depending on the level of use.
Furthermore, when you get such large ships you actually becoming
environment friendly because fewer ships are coming and you use less fuel
eventually in transporting that large amount
This shows the multiple effect of doing a deep seaport that
is capable of bringing in large- size ships in all the deep see has economic
and social gains.
