Nigeria Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (NACCIMA) has declared that the Niger Delta region, which makes up over 70 percent of the country’s coastline, has enough human and logistics resources to lead the maritime industry.
It said this was because of the over 68 years of oil exploration which had taken place mostly in the coastal states and within the waters, thus discovering many locally-made solutions for the associated maritime industry.
NACCIMA vice president, Dr. Emi Membere-Otaji, spoke at a seminar and maritime award event by the Energy Maritime Reporters (EMR) corps in Port Harcourt.
Membere-Otaji stated that one of such solutions was the use of locally-made and manned flat-bottomed tugboats to move containers away from the Apapa Port in Lagos to other areas where trucks could pick them to ease the traffic gridlock at the nation’s sea ports.
He advised on the use of locally-built flat-bottomed barges, tugboats, etc, to move containers away from the ports to terminals, so as to ease the gridlock.
