The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) is creating a master plan for the nation’s ports, hoping to create healthy competition and further encourage the development of the Lekki Deep Sea Port and Badagry Deep Sea Ports still under construction, according to All Africa.
The authority aims to be able to reveal the plan will to the public within the next six months; the initial inspiration for the project was to try and update the existing plan which could see ports having to aggressively compete for business, in some cases putting each other out of business.
Hadiza Bala Usman, Managing Director of NPA, said: “One of the important things that I have felt the need to institute is the port development master plan, a 25 years master plan, which will guide the development of ports I the country.
“We have commenced that activity at the NPA. I met on ground a development master plan for individual port in the NPA but I felt the need to have a holistic master plan which guides all such port development. That way we will not have over laps and have ports that will be competing with each other and compete each other out of business.”
PTI reported in late October, 2016 that Nigerian Ports were said to be suffering under the naval imposed bunker ban, which prevented the common practise of a vessel taking on all its fuel and supplies for the length of its trip at a single port, the ban was supposedly costing Nigeria up to US$65 million a year.
This development master plan will be good news for the Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem, DP World Group Chairman and CEO, as he recently publically welcomed efforts by African nations to improve their infrastructure, an essential pillar for building a growing economy and connecting the continent to the world.
