Gridlock and inefficiency at the ports of Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos, delayed shipment of 50,000 tons of cashew nuts valued at $300 million and is threatening this year’s output as traders are cash- strapped.

1. Bribes, Beatings, Gridlock and Inefficiency Threatens Cashew Nut Export in Nigeria
Gridlock and inefficiency at the ports of Nigeria’s commercial hub, Lagos, delayed shipment of 50,000
tons of cashew nuts valued at $300 million and is threatening this year’s output as traders are cash-
strapped.
The kidney-shaped fruits from last year’s harvest should have been exported by January, according to
Tola Fasheru, president of Nigeria Cashew Exporters Association. Instead, they are still in containers
on trucks waiting to enter the ports or on wharves, he said.
Roads to Lagos ports are badly congested, with hundreds of lorries queuing to enter the premises and
either deliver or pick goods. In addition, inadequate capacity and infrastructure, stifling red tape and
corruption are hampering export processes, according to Fasheru.
Container trucks sit stationary in heavy traffic on the approach to Lagos Port on Oct. 12, 2018.
Photographer: Paul Wallace/Bloomberg
“There is a palpable lack of synergy among the port operators and this is affecting the business of our
members,” he said Thursday by phone from Lagos.
Some members of the cashew association have defaulted on contracts to the extent that foreign
buyers are now walking away from them. “They are no longer willing to give us fresh contracts,” said
the group’s president.
No Money
The delay is likely to affect the output target of 260,000 tons for the current season, which started in
February and will end in July.
“Not one single cashew exporter is in the field now as he is owing on contracts and as a result has no
money to operate with," said Fasheru.

2. Africa’s sixth largest cashew producer plans to raise its annual production to 500,000 tons by 2023,
according to a five-year strategic plan released in 2018 by the National Cashew Association of Nigeria.
The country is the continent’s biggest oil producer and President Muhammadu Buhari’s
administration is seeking to reduce dependency on crude and diversify the economy, which
contracted in 2016 after oil prices and output crashed. Agriculture is one of the key sectors the
government has been trying to boost.
Bribes and Beatings
The lines of aging blue, red and yellow trucks begin almost 6 miles (10 kilometers) from the gates of
Nigeria’s main port of Apapa.
Valentine, a 34-year-old driver, has been queuing outside the Lagos site for two weeks. He’s had to
deal with policemen demanding bribes and fend off hoodlums known as area boys. “This is the worst
I’ve seen it,” he said, changing tires in a grimy orange t-shirt. “Every year, it gets worse.”
The congestion outside and inefficiency within Nigeria’s ports is choking the economy, which vies with
South Africa as the continent’s biggest, and causes havoc for businesses that use them to import
everything from cars to computers, food and machinery.
Nigeria loses $19 billion annually, or about 5 percent of gross domestic product, from the delays,
traffic jams, illegal charges and insecurity that are increasingly prevalent at its ports, the Lagos
Chamber of Commerce & Industry said in a report this year.
The problems at Apapa and other ports such as Calabar and Port Harcourt have been a headache for
successive administrations, which have failed to fix decaying infrastructure, reduce stifling red tape
and tackle corruption. Terminal operators, including APM Terminals, a unit of Denmark’s AP Moller-
Maersk A/S, rely on generators because power cuts are so frequent.
But it’s worsened in recent years, especially at Apapa. Crumbling roads have all but ground trucks to
a halt. Once they do manage to enter, drivers and businesses have to contend with a plethora of
customs, immigration and security agents before they can pick up containers. It can take 20 days to
clear products, compared with 48 hours in neighboring Benin and Ghana, according to the LCCI.
The cost of moving a container from Apapa to other parts of Lagos has soared to as much as
N 700,000 ($1,956) from about N 150,000 two years ago as trucking firms put up their prices to make
up for the delays, according to the Nigerian Shippers’ Council.
Intimidated Drivers
“We have to pay the area boys and the police also want money,” said David, a 40-year-old driver who’s
been traveling to Apapa for almost 20 years. “We can pay N 80,000 in bribes per trip. If you don’t, it
can take weeks to get in.
Sometimes they will beat you if you don’t give them money. “It’s taken a toll on the companies of Aliko
Dangote, Africa’s richest man. Dangote Cement Plc, Nigeria’s biggest listed firm, may cancel plans to
build an export terminal at Apapa because of the congestion, Chief Executive Officer Joe Makoju said
on a call with investors last month. Dangote Sugar Refinery Plc blamed a fall in third-quarter profit

3. partly on the bottleneck there, which it said was leading to more smuggling of sugar through Nigeria’s
land borders.
Vice President Yemi Osinbajo visited Apapa in May 2017 and directed officials to start working around
the clock and all agencies to locate their operations in one place to ease delays.
It’s been to little avail. Many people prefer to use more efficient ports in Benin, Ghana and Togo,
according to Mike Onulide, who runs a business exporting food including noodles and garri, a cassava-
based staple popular in West Africa.
“You don’t face the same kinds of frustration there that you do in Nigeria,” he said, recalling how a
fellow businessman still hasn’t received compensation after one of his containers was dropped into
the sea early this year. “There’s been no improvement.”
That can’t come soon enough for the weary drivers who bear the brunt of the chaos.
“I haven’t had a bath in over a week,” said Akinola Kabiru, waiting to get into Apapa and who says he
may have to pay N 75,000 in bribes to keep his place in the queue. “I pee under the truck. I sleep under
the truck. If my boss sends the money, maybe I can enter.”
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