By Jimoh Babatunde & Godfrey Bivbere

THE Federal Government, yesterday, pledged to complete the river ports located at Baro in Niger State, Lokoja in Kogi State and Oguta in Imo State, which have been abandoned for about a decade before the end of 2019.

Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi, gave the assurance in Lagos, at the 2017 National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) International Conference and Exhibition, adding that budgetary appropriations have been made to ensure the completion of the projects.

He urged the private sector to maximally utilise the network of rivers, creeks, lagoons and lakes in the country, even as he tasked NIWA management to procure bigger dredgers in order for the agency to perform better in its operations.

His words: “Adequate budgetary appropriations have been made to ensure the completion of the Baro, Lokoja and Oguta River Ports within the lifespan of this administration. I am pleased to confirm that we have recorded tremendous progress on the concessioning of Onitsha River Port and we are very hopeful that the process of concessioning of the port will be completed before the end on the year.

I am happy to announce that NIWA, especially under its new leadership, has been able to look inward and through their in-house engineers, have commenced the maintenance dredging of the Ajaokuta to Onitsha channels of River Niger; and this will save the country huge sums of money. Thus I implore NIWA to procure bigger dredgers that have bigger capacity to perform better than they are doing presently.”

In his remarks, Managing Director of NIWA, Boss Mustapha, stated that the agency is focused on developing inland ports for cargo handling and passenger operations in order to create connectivity for multimodal transport linkages (Road-Rail-Waterways-Sea).

“One of the focuses of this conference is to encourage government and stakeholders to strengthen the desired machinery towards deriving the benefits of investments in Coastal and Inland Shipping Operations on the Nigerian waterways.

The Onitsha port that is fully equipped and was commissioned in January 2013 has now received ministerial approval for the advert for Expression of Interest (EoI) to be published. We are also scheduled to complete the construction and installation of cargo handling equipment at the Baro port, Lokoja port, Oguta port and a number of jetties and landing platforms in many communities along the waterways this year,” he stated.

Vanguardngr