Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi has explained how some river ports contribute to waste of public funds.
Amaechi who said this while appearing on a television programme said that the multibillion naira Baro river port is of no use.
He noted that if the lower River Niger is not dredged, no vessel would be able to sail to Baro port.
According to the Ships and ports news, which monitored the programme, the minister said, “I had this conversation with my friend, Senator Goje about the viability of the river ports that we have including Onitsha, Baro, Lokoja and Oguta river ports and I felt that it was a waste of funds.
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“The reason is that for you to have those river ports functional, you must have to dredge River Niger. For now, even if you dredge, it is still 2.5 to 3 metre draft, which determines the vessel that can go there and the minimum you can have is a six-metre vessel. There is absolutely no vessel that will come in there at 2.5 to 3 metres draft.
“The idea when the Baro port was concessioned is that you pick up a cargo maybe in Warri or Port Harcourt because Lagos is too far, and put it on a barge and move it to Baro. But how many times will the barge be able to move those cargoes to Baro?
“For the man who imports through Lagos or Port Harcourt, if he puts it on a train, he arrives the same day, and there is no issue of insecurity unlike the man who has taken the cargo from Port Harcourt seaport to Baro by barge.
“They wanted the port constructed, so we completed it. My responsibility is to construct a Baro port and I have constructed it. As Minister, I did engage the public that these are the problems we will face when we finish this Baro port. First Nigeria does not produce anything in the first place so what are you going to transport? If we make the Apapa seaport very efficient, then we don’t even have enough cargo.”
NatureNews gathered that the Baro river port, was built by the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and commissioned by President Muhammadu Buhari in January 2019.
