The Nigerian Shipper’s Council (NSC) has revealed that the Dala Inland Dry Port in Kano State is at 80 per cent completion stage, saying the final assessment of the project would be carried out at the end of March.
The council’s Executive Secretary, Emmanuel Jime stated this at the weekend when he joined the Minister of Transport, Rotimi Amaechi, on an assessment tour of the project at Zawaciki area of Kano.
He said the council’s coordinating team that has been monitoring the project put the project at 80% completion rate in its last weekly report.
“The final assessment of this project is going to be done at the end of this month when the Honourable Minister (of Transport) is going to come back and we are all going to come back as a team but the much we can say at this point is that we are relying on the report of our own coordinating team that has been reporting to us,” Jime said.
Reacting to the call by the promoter of the project for the port to be declared as a port of origin and destination based on an agreement that the declaration would be made once the project gets to 60 per cent, the Shippers’ Council boss said it was better to wait till the completion of the project.
“I can’t speak to that agreement because I was not here when the agreement was entered into and I haven’t even seen the records that pointed to that but that is not really a problem because when we are done with the full delivery of this project, the process to declare it a point of origin and destination is not a complicated one at all”, he said.
Earlier, the Chairman of Dala Inland Dry Port, Alh. Abubakar Sahabo Bawuro assured the delegation of the commitment to deliver the full completion of the physical process of the dry port by the end of March but added that there is a need to get the declaration process sorted out to further enhance the marketing feasibility of the port.