RORO Vessels Stranded At Cotonou Port As Importers Incur N600m Storage Charges

Several Roll On Roll Off (RORO) vessels destined to berth at the Ports and Terminal Multiservice Limited (PTML) and Five Star Logistics Terminal, Tin-Can Island Port, Apapa, are currently trapped at Cotonou Ports.

Investigations revealed that the vessels were stranded due to the two weeks protest embarked upon by clearing agents over the Vehicle Identification Number (VIN), policy introduced by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on imported vehicles.

It was further gathered that the protest that led to shutdown of port activities had led to trapping of over 12,000 vehicles in the two ports.

Vehicle importers said due to congestion at the port, RoRo vessels that are supposed to come into Lagos Port to discharge cargoes are currently stranded at Cotonou Port, waiting for further instructions whether to come in or not as they are unable to berth at the Lagos port because of lack of space as the nation’s RoRo terminals are filled up.

For this singular reason, importers are staged to incur over N600 million as storage charges at the RoRo terminals, even as the evacuation of general cargoes have also been grossly impaired at the port with Tin Can Island Container Terminal (TICT), Ports and Cargo, even Josepdam also affected by the protests.

Vehicle importers have, however, disclosed that RORO terminals, PTML and Five Star Logistics charge N5,000 on each vehicle for the first five days it stayed in the terminal while N10,000 is charged daily for vehicles that stayed between six to ten days and N15,000 charged daily for vehicles between 11 to 15 days.

It was gathered that terminal operators charge storage three days from the date the vessel berthed at the port to discharge vehicles.

Shipping position data obtained from the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), four vessels, Paglia, Grande Sierra Leone, Grande Cotonou, and Grande Cameroon, came in via the Grimaldi shipping line to berth at the PTML. It was gathered that PTML has over 10,000 units of vehicles while Five Star Logistics Terminal has capacity to receive over 5000 units of vehicles.

Meanwhile, President of Ndigboamaka Progressive (Market) Association, Chief Dr. Jude Ringo Okeke said the regime of the VIN should be suspended indefinitely until after effects of Covid-19, which importers braced up to support the Government and kept the port open during the two months lockdown period.

“The introduction of VIN was not to the knowledge of importers. Our agents have limited authority to commit us in decision making. We are not with them in this VIN regime. So, the Customs should serve the importers to our satisfaction in all times.

“We want to be consulted in major decisions affecting our businesses. We shall not hesitate to shut down the markets if decisions like this involving the traders, importers and majorly the public without our input as critical stakeholders.

“Our colleagues in the freight forwarding business have been having a bitter experience with the Customs and other Government agencies in the clearing of our consignments,” he said.

However, Chairman of SALS, Rev. Jonathan Nicol said that the VIN regime must be discarded and be suspended immediately, they (Customs) must make sure that all the trapped vehicles are given accelerated clearance from the ports without major demurrages because importers did not create the challenge.

“These 12000 vehicles attract daily demurrages and shipping line charges and that is quite enormous and by the time you quantify how much importers are paying for demurrages, it is amounting to over N600 million. We cannot continue to accommodate such expenses anymore.

“Never in the history has the Nigerian Customs Service made over N1 trillion as Customs duty and now they are making N2 trillion. Is that not enough for them? The VIN policy is pathetic and we think enough is enough,” he said.