| dc.description.abstract | Nigeria’s seaports, handling over 70% of the nation's trade, face chronic delays due to congestion, bureaucratic hurdles, and corruption, resulting in annual losses of US$3-5 billion in freight charges and up to N2 trillion in demurrage for over 5,000 trapped cargoes. Average dwell times exceed 10 days – far above global benchmarks of 1-2 days – eroding economic competitiveness, inflating costs, and deterring investment. While executive reforms have yielded limited gains, targeted legislative amendments to the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Act are imperative to enforce accountability, modernize operations, and integrate best practices from efficient hubs like Singapore, Rotterdam, China, and Kenya. Key recommendations for intervention include:
• The National Assembly may wish to amend Section 8 of the NPA ACT to expand the NPA’s functions to mandate adopted of global best practices, including a landlord model for private operator involvement, implementation of a Port Community System and single- window clearance to ease delays at the ports.
• The National Assembly may wish to amend Section 82 of the NPA Act to introduce strict liability for avoidable delays, requiring mandatory refunds or offsets for affected parties, while imposing fines on the NPA for systemic delays.
• The National Assembly may wish to mandate system interoperability to require full integration between NPA systems and the Customs Service’s B’Odogwu platform for real time cargo clearance, to prevent bottlenecks.
• The National Assembly may wish to advise the executive to allocate resources for dedicated truck parks and rail links to all Nigerian ports via PPPs, reducing road gridlock and improving multimodal connectivity.
• the National Assembly may wish to advise the executive to open and develop underutilized ports like; Onne, Ibaka deep sea port and Warri ports to decongest Lagos ports | en_US |
