Dredging the Niger?

The federal government is proceeding with a long-mooted plan to dredge the River Niger.

Dredging the Niger has been talked about for years, usually by people who argue that creating a port at Onitsha would spare businessmen based there the delays of waiting for goods to first clear the ports at Lagos and Port Harcourt (Delay One), and then be transported on our roads that will never be confused for autobahns (Delay Two). The ethno-regional question was also brought up directly or alluded to indirectly, with certain individuals alleging both the delays, the lack of an Onitsha Port, and the placement of Port Harcourt in Rivers State were all part of some nefarious plan to punish a particular ethnic group.

More recently (relatively speaking), there have been new voices calling for the Niger to be dredged all the way up to Abuja, and for the creation of an Abuja Port. Similar arguments are made for the Abuja Port as are made for the Onitsha Port. Similar ethnic innuendo is indirectly alluded to (by proponents and opponents, who feel this will be a port that belongs to a certain ethnic nationality, who will no longer be dependent on ports where they are allegedly discriminated against). And to top it off, those who believe that the national political capital must also be the national commercial/economic capital feel Abuja must have a port (and a stock exchange, and etc).

In this 25-page interview with The Guardian, President Yar'Adua reveals that the plan (presumably devised after years of discussion and debate that preceded his administration) is to create SEVEN inland ports. He did not mention specific cities, but if seven new ports are to be created, it is highly likely both Abuja and Onitsha are on the list (and if Onitsha isn't, there will be another avoidable political crisis).

Before I talk about the dredging, let me talk about the cities in question.

I love Abuja. The decision to move the political capital to Abuja is one of the few decisions made since 1960 that I wholeheartedly agree with. With that said, we have done a poor job of handling the transition. I do not think the planners have a clear idea of what Abuja is and what Abuja should be. For one thing, it should not (and will not) replace Lagos as the commercial/economic capital (I love Lagos too), but I don't want to digress too far off the subject of this post (except to add that the much-praised Nasir El-Rufai's robotic attachment to an outdated city plan should perhaps not be as praised as it is -- it is long past time for us to rethink Abuja, before events move beyond our control).

I love Onitsha. The city went through a period where it was basically abandoned, and became possibly the dirtiest place I had ever seen. Its been a while since I last passed through, and I really hope things have changed for the better. In a way, cities like Onitsha, Ibadan and Enugu have been affected in the post-1960 era by the rise to prominence of other cities that do the sort of things that these cities used to be the hubs for. Still, Onitsha sits at the heart of a productive industrial region (on both sides of the Niger) that has not yet begun to scratch the surface of its full potential. Infrastructure improvements would definitely help unleash some of that potential.

Now, having honestly expressed my affection for these cities, I have to say: Dredging the River Niger is a bad idea.

While Nigerian public opinion continues to see the federal republic as a rich country that spends its money poorly, the truth is the Federal Republic of Nigeria is not a rich country. Our resources and productive capacity have been insufficient to meet our needs and requirements. This has always been true, and we have always needed to be judicious with our spending (unfortunately, we never were), but it is even more important to note this truth in the current economic climate.

President Yar'Adua acknowledges this. In the 25-page intervies, he spoke of having to cut back on grandiose schemes started by the Obasanjo administration because the federal government did not have enough money to pay for all of the schemes. He proposed cutting the pay of (faux) elected and appointed political officials. Yar'Adua also (sensibly in my opinion) asked the National Assembly to revise the 2009 Federal Budget downward, because the revenue projections on which it was based are unrealistic in the light of changes to the world economy (read: the price of crude oil). Last I checked, the President was still wrestling with the Assembly on the budget revision; it seems some legislators are concerned that the President will cut unnecessary spending on constituency projects with which they buy cheap, temporary popularity, so they have challenged him to implement the budget they passed (and he signed) or take them to court to force the revision.

Where we are right now fiscally (and where we have been since BEFORE regaining self-government in 1960) is a place where you have to prioritize and make choices, because you cannot do everything. YES, it is important to unleash the potential power of Onitsha, and YES it is important to link Abuja to the Atlantic. And the other five potential ports are probably also places that could benefit from arterial linkages to the sea.

But we already have a plan for this -- the plan to expand the railway lines.

President Yar'Adua mentioned these plans as well in the interview. I am not sure I agree with the plan (as he described it), and perhaps in that disagreement lies the root of my disagreement with the dredging of the Niger.

If we properly design our new railroad system, it would connect Onitsha and Abuja to the coastal ports. It would also connect both cities to every other major citiy in Nigeria. This second set of connections is important, particularly for Onitsha. With a port, they can bring in their goods. With pan-Nigerian rail-line, they can bring in their goods, and efficiently send those goods to buyers across Nigeria; indeed, Onitsha could actually come to buy more of its merchandise from producers in the rest of Nigeria instead of bringing in imports, because transportation and electricity/power are two infrastructure areas that could dramatically decrease the cost of manufacturing in Nigeria (indeed, it is rather weird that we are proposing to spend so much money on dredging, mainly to facilitate imports of consumer goods for the Onitsha market and the Abuja power elite).

But here is the thing, why should we, a country that does not really have enough money to fix all its problems, spend money on BOTH? The rail line basically fixes the problem that the inland ports are supposed to fix, and has the benefit of doing so much more than that as well. So why not focus all of our scarce funds on expanding and renovating the rail lines, which kills multiple birds with one stone, instead of expending some of it dredging the Niger? However much it is we save, would it not be better to add that many more kilometres of track rather than have to wait that much longer to expand the lines? For those who think "constituency projects" are important, bear in mind EVERY CONSTITUENCY in Nigeria stands to benefit from the economic efficiencies that could be introduced with a real railway network that is appropriate to the Federal Republic's needs (as opposed to being appropriate to the needs of the British colonial government in a time long since passed).

We have to prioritize the rail network -- and electricity -- which should mean that these get frontline consideration for spending our scarce public funds.

You might say the existing ports have only limited capacity, even with as much drastic expansion as is geographically possible, but even then it would be cheaper to encourage outside (as in NOT the Nigerian government) investment in expanding the facilities at Douala, Cotonou-Porto Novo, and even as far afield as Takoradi-Sekondi, and then creating road or rail links between those ports and the Nigerian rail grid. Remember this links go both ways, allowing us to export to these countries, even as their ports ease the congestion in ours. And we do not have to pay for the expansion; I am sure they would be keen to exploit our market, and would either do it themselves or open it up to private investors, some of whom could be Nigerian entrepreneurs or consolidated Nigerian banks. I daresay the competitive and comparative advantages of the seven proposed inland ports lie elsewhere, in economic territory that would more easily be unleashed by rail-links that could bind them (and other cities in Nigeria) into integrated production networks.

Why pay twice for something we could pay for once, while achieving a more efficient and effective outcome?

I don't really blame the government, because they are being pushed by influential segments of the citizenry, who have embraced dredging the Niger almost like a new religion. The odd thing about it is these so-called inland ports cannot possibly achieve their touted objectives without an improved national rail and road network, yet we would not even be thinking about the inland ports if we had the rail and road network we needed.