The Nigerian Railway Corporation (NRC) has said it was ale to transport only 3,360 containers from the Apapa port to Ebute Metta and Ijoko in Ogun State by rail in 2017.
The Lagos District Manager of the Corporation, Jerry Oche, made this known to newsmen on Wednesday.
An average of 1,000 containers are required to move out of Apapa and Tin Can ports daily, meaning the NRC, despite government’s huge investment, is still far away from providing alternative means of evacuating containers from the port.
“We have transported about 3,360 containers from Apapa to Ebute Metta and Ijoko in Ogun, depending on the agreement with the owner.
“The service consists of movement of containers from Apapa to various district offices where the articulated vehicles could start transporting them to their various destinations.
“The shuttle services run a number of trains into the port and bring out goods to decongest the port.
“We run about three trains a day, each carrying about 20 containers to relieve the congestion at the port,” Oche said.
He admitted that the corporation lacks the capacity to meet customers demand.
“Presently about 18,000 metric tons of pipes are waiting at the port to be transported by NRC to Osogbo, Osun State.
“The demand keeps increasing every day; our major challenge is capacity to meet up in terms of wagons, locomotives engines and trained personnel to run the trains,’’ he said.