NIWA will Complete Lokoja, Oguta River Port in 2018- Ibrahim

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Acting Managing Director, NIWA, Danladi Ibrahim
The Acting Managing Director, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Danladi Ibrahim has assured the stakeholders that NIWA would certainly complete the ongoing construction of Lokoja and Oguta River ports before the end of 2018.

Ibrahim highlighted this in Abuja, noting that the Lokoja port was already 75 per cent completed while Oguta port, in Imo, was 70 per cent completed.

“We are looking at Lokoja, Oguta ports to be completed in 2018. We have also completed one of our major ports in Baro.

“The two ports will be completed before the end of the year.  As soon as the budget implementation starts, we will swing into action,” the official indicated, adding that by 2019, the agency would commence the Makurdi port, because the new ports would be developed on the basis of need arising.

Ibrahim, who also stated that the agency was going to buy equipment in batches to start moving cargoes from Lagos port to Onitsha and Baro, posited that when Onitsha, Lokoja and Baro River ports commence operation, they would create over 2000 jobs.

“By the time Onitsha, Lokoja and Baro ports come into operation, more than 2000 jobs will be created because the operations of these ports will attract infrastructure.

“The port will be connected to rail, companies like Dangote and Bua will also be handy to utilise these ports”, Ibrahim stated further, stressing however, that the dredging maintenance from Ajaokuta-Onitsha would be done as soon as allocation in the 2018 budget was released .

He said that the agency had embarked on direct maintenance dredging of its channels, which was a very cheap way of maintaining the waterways unlike the previous practice, noting that the maintenance of the dredging from Baro to Idah in Kogi state was recently completed.

“We are acquiring additional two dredgers from our 2018 budget and every year we will be adding, until we have a pool of sufficient number of dredgers that we can maintain.

“We are getting the additional dredgers to enhance our capacity for in-house maintenance dredging of the channels”, he also said, adding that the since Onitsha port had been concessioned, “operations will start any moment from now”

Meanwhile, the Management of NIWA has emphasised that the Authority is already collaborating with Europe and China on waterways development, through the understudy of the major rivers in the world located in those countries.

Speaking further, the Acting Managing Director, on maintenance said that NIWA was also entering into agreement with those countries on technical collaboration to assist the agency with expert that would train its staff from time to time.

“We have undergone some studies of the major Rivers in the world, for instance, we have studied the Danubi river, which crosses about 10 European countries, we are also understudying Rhine River in Europe.

“And the river that crosses the city of Changjiang in China and as a result of this, we are entering into agreements with them for technical collaboration between NIWA, Europe and China.”

According to him, the partnership is on technical areas, exchanging technical knowledge, they will also be assisting NIWA with the training of the staff.

“The collaboration is for general development of inland waterways system, in terms of ports, in terms of general management, and dockyards.”

“The best way to develop infrastructure for water development is to partner with the private sector,” Ibrahim said.

He said that involving the private sector was expedient because government cannot do it alone, it cannot do it perfectly because it’s capital intensive.

The Managing Director, however, said that even in developed countries, substantial parts of developments are on Public Private Partnership (PPP).

Ibrahim, however, said that the only way to develop infrastructure in Nigeria was through PPP.


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