Rice Importers Shun Lagos Ports

As the Yuletide countdown begins, Nigerian importers have shunned the nation’s seaports situated in Nigeria’s commercial centre, Lagos, checks have revealed.

Lagos is home to Nigeria’s busiest port, Apapa. It is also home to the largest port in the country, Tin Can Island Port (TCIP), Apapa, among other terminals dedicated to specific cargoes.


Checks showed that Nigeria’s staple food and the most sought after commodity in this period of the year, rice is no longer imported into the country through the nation’s seaports, especially the ones situated in Lagos.

It was gathered that most importers now prefer using the international land borders, particularly Seme and Idiroko.

This followed the decision of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to lift the ban on the use of the international land borders to import rice into the country.

Already, NCS has revealed that not less than N1.2 billion has been raked in as revenue generated from rice imports through the land borders in October and November 2015.

It also said a total quantity of rice imported through the land borders stood at 17.596 metric tons (MT). The amount generated has given credence to the decision of the NCS to allow importers and licensed customs agents to use of Nigeria’s international borders to import the staple commodity into the country.

NCS said in a statement that these figures were disclosed at a strategy session convened by the Comptroller-General of Customs, Colonel Hameed Ali (retired).

Ali was said to have convened the meeting at NCS Headquarters, Abuja which was attended by the top echelon of the service to review revenue performance for 2015.

According to the statement, two months ago, the Comptroller-General of NCS had approved the removal of the restriction placed on importation of rice through the land borders.

“The removal was predicated on the large scale rice smuggling through the land borders, resulting to huge revenue loss and distortions in the price of the item in the local markets. The huge collection in just two months has vindicated our position. If we had stuck to our previous directive, this much quantum of rice would still have been smuggled anyway, and we would have lost over a billion naira revenue as this critical period of our economic downtown,” NCS said.

Meanwhile, data collated by the Nigerian Port Authority (NPA) showed the vessels and various cargoes expected in the country from now till January 1, 2016.

The data popularly called “Shipping Position” showed that out of the 30 vessels expected within the period under review, none of them is laden with rice.

The Shipping Position, also revealed that within the period under review none of the vessels is carrying the staple commodity.

According to the data, three key terminals in Lagos Port Complex (LPC), Apapa known for the handling of bulk cargo including rice were not any vessel laden with the commodity. The terminals, ENL, ABTL and GDNL were not expecting to receive rice in the period under review.

The NPA document shows that the ENL Terminals would receive 12,895 MT of general cargoes, which are not likely to include rice. Other cargoes expected at the bulk terminals include 3,496MT of fish and 27,500MT of bulk fertiliser expected to arrive at ENL Terminals this month.