Review of Nigerian Port Reforms

Abstract

For many years, Nigeria’s port system has suffered from poor performance and high costs, leading to long turn-around times of ships, and rising container dwell time. Furthermore, unlike the usual status of ports as “Cash-Cows”, the Nigerian Ports generally required financial support from the Federal Government, especially for its capital investments. Before the reform, the Nigerian ports system was highly centralized. The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) required permission from either the President or the Minister of Transport for virtually all the major decisions. This led to inefficiency and lengthy decision-making process in the Nigerian Ports subsector. The Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) was responsible for both regulatory and operational functions of the ports which, was considered as another major bottleneck to attaining efficiency in the port operations. Comprehensive reform of the port sub-sector began in 2000. The reform program was designed to remove the major impediments to efficient operation and thereby facilitate streamlining of import and export activities. The measures adopted included a shift of management from government controlled system toward the landlord port model and the extensive award of private sector concessions for port based cargo-handling facilities. Despite significant progress since 2000, much still remains to be done to improve the productivity of Nigeria’s main ports. The policies and strategies adopted in effecting this improvement are collectively described as reform. The objective of this chapter is to examine the nature of this reform, outline its guiding principles and discuss the international best practices in port and maritime sub-sector reform programmes. The chapter also examines the concept of reform, port reform process in Nigeria with reference to its objectives, strategies and progress.