- Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority, Dr. Abubakar Dantsoho (left) in a handshake with the Vice-President of Clarion Shipping West Africa Ltd, Bernadine Eloka, with the Country Manager of APMT Nigeria, Frederick Klinke, standing by during the maiden call by the first fully Nigeria-owned container vessel, MV OCEAN DRAGON, at the Onne Port Complex… on Thursday
By Anthony Nwachukwu
Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Abubakar Dantsoho, has restated the agency’s readiness to promote indigenous ownership of shipping vessels, as the wholly Nigeria-owned container vessel, MV OCEAN DRAGON, makes her maiden call at the West African Container Terminal at Onne Port on Thursday.
Dantsoho said that apart from the vessel’s high loading capacity of 349 TEUs and several other distinctive features, the fact that it is wholly Nigeria-owned speaks to the NPA’s renewed orientation towards Nigerian content development.
According to him, “the fact that this vessel can move thousands of Gross Registered Tonnages across African destinations within days signposts Nigeria’s commitment to the dictates of the International Association for Ports and Harbours (IAPH) on multi-modalism and seamless port-hinterland connectivity.
“This gives us great delight as it supports the rationale behind NPA’s simplified export processes through the Export Processing Terminals (EPTs), conceptualised to link local producers of value in the remotest hinterland to the farthest international centres of demand.”
He noted that the NPA’s port modernisation project and ongoing port operations reforms are cognisant of the need to sustain the enabling business environment that midwifed the year-on-year attainment of national trade surpluses.
Dantsoho emphasised that MV OCEAN DRAGON’s coming on stream to propel even greater volumes on the heels of increasing growth in Nigeria’s transshipment figures from the Lekki Deep Seaport, among others, symbolises the fact that the Nigerian business environment is progressively getting better.
He noted that, with shipping volumes promising to get higher, forward-looking investments, including MV OCEAN DRAGON, will have a big impact in the long run.
Against that background, he assured the global investment community that the NPA would continue to galvanise stakeholder efforts to continually promote the ease of doing business in a bid to optimise the rich blue economy inherent in the nation’s maritime endowments.
Owned by the indigenous investor, Clarion Shipping West Africa Limited, the vessel boosts the investment drive towards reaping the cost and time-saving benefits of short-sea shipping by plying in-country maritime trade routes across Nigeria and the West African sub-region.
It also offers an efficient alternative to road transport as the NPA’s efforts at deepening multi-modalism crystallise, he stated.
The vessel is scheduled to operate across West Africa and beyond, servicing ports in Nigeria, Benin Republic, Togo, Ghana, Cameroun, Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt and South Africa.
