Tour through the harbour

On Saturday I went with Sil on a harbour tour. Sil is working for GMT and he is the biggest inbound logistics company Nigerian Breweries works with. In the 2 months I have been working here I see and hear every day the impact of road issues in the harbour. On all main roads as well as the area around our brewery the streets are full of parked trucks waiting to be able to get into the harbour..   The main entrance to the harbour and its terminals crosses a bridge. There is ‘unclarity’ who needs to pay for the renovation of the bridge, Lagos State or the Nigerian Federal Government. Since this is still under discussion there is no progress in the reconstruction. When we just arrived we heard that the average speed of a truck in the harbour is 200 meters per day. However by now it has collapsed to 50 meters per day. Sil offered to show me the Lagos world from the waterside. I was impressed by the trip. I was picked up at Ocean Parade (another compound on Banana Island) and from there we went by boat. The weather was terrible (rain season) but it added to the flavour of our water trip. If you look at live at the waterfront you feel even more privileged. Life is hard and brutal for most Nigerians. We saw a lot of sand transport by sea which is won outside the harbour. It is transported to the area of Mile2 Road where it is used to make bricks from it. And of course huge amounts of plastic/pet garbage everywhere. And we saw the trucks everywhere completely stuck.

Since getting your goods out of the harbour is a time consuming process (> month) GMT has a barge solution that brings directly the container from the Cay over the water to save this time. I saw how it worked and thought this will be very helpful when our container with our furniture arrives. The container is due on October 10. My colleague Marcus container arrived mid-September with the same Nigerian moving company. So I organised a meeting with the moving company, Marcus and our purchasing team. The moving company was represented by a lovely lady who we explained why we wanted to talk and how we could help to speed up the delivery process from the harbour to our house. After this introduction she opened her handbag and found after some searching a piece of paper which she tried to flatten with her hand before using it. It gave me  a good feeling. Our furniture is in good hands. She explained the whole process. There are about 7 steps and in a good functioning situation it takes on average 10 days to get custom clearance to pick up your container….. All steps were explained by her and it goes as follows; Step 1 is going to a customs officer to get approval to be allowed to handle the paperwork. If the customs chief is in the office this goes fast. However he might not be there. Then you need to come back. When you come back he might be gone again. Maybe nobody knows where he is that day. He might be to the mosque or he might be in traffic. So this can take longer. Step 2 is similar. To make a long story short, the container of Marcus is now in step 2 which should be ready in 3 days on average. Unfortunately for him it's now almost 3 weeks……

We keep you posted on our container and we are still aiming to have our furniture by mid November………or shall we say, at least before Christmas.........