The challenges posed by the littering of empty, rickety containers on the nation’s ports and some terminals cannot be overemphasised. They tend to corrode riverbanks, sully drinking water, trap silt and debris, threaten transport and fishing livelihoods, and drain the country financially.

In May, The PUNCH reported that the terminal manager of APM Terminals Apapa, Steen Knudsen, announced that the terminal has temporarily restricted the reception of additional empty containers until the existing stock is cleared by shipping lines.

A recent report by the Sea Empowerment Research Centre warned that between 65,000 and 100,000 rickety empty containers clutter Nigerian ports, and up to 45 per cent are structurally unsafe and rickety. Bulk shipments entering Nigeria seldom leave equally laden. Instead, freighters depart with nearly empty boxes, as shipping lines seem to find it far cheaper to abandon empties than ship them back.

The SEREC report revealed that handling a 20-foot container back to its origin costs between $2,000 and $4,000, while a 40-footer may cost $3,500–6,000. As containers arrive, exit journeys return near-empty, and roughly 97 per cent of empties linger, whether at ports, roadsides, or drifting in waterways. The result is a cascading tragedy for local transport, more empties, and fewer vessels available for domestic trade.

In a June report, the Head of Research at SEREC, Mr. Eugene Nweke, warned of a ticking financial and environmental time bomb from 100,000 abandoned empty containers. These containers are far from inert debris; they are eyesores, flow disruptors, pollution sources, and fasteners for illegal dumping. They commonly corrode and release heavy metals, trap organic waste, block drainage, limit navigable depth for canoes, and launch a reality painfully evident in communities across the Niger-Benue axis.

The maritime research group estimates a national loss of $500m annually, tied to FX volatility and container mismanagement. This figure comprises demurrage fees, storage, port delays, lost freight revenue, and exchange rate slippage.

According to SEREC, “a significant fraction of the costs lies in avoidable inefficiencies, with N10,000 daily demurrage charged by carriers after standard free days ballooning into N60,000/month in storage levies.”

The hidden toll is in the heavy metal leaching and ecological degradation. Soil and groundwater near container clusters, especially in floodplains, often show elevated levels of contaminants, undermining agriculture and drinking water quality.

Neglected containers also become breeding grounds for mosquitoes and rodents, heightening risks of malaria, leptospirosis, and other waterborne diseases. Coastal and riverine settlements, poorly served by formal waste systems, bear this burden directly.

Challenges

National ports and inland routes are crippled by container congestion. SEREC data highlights that up to 80 per cent of Nigeria’s outbound container traffic in 2023 consisted of empties. This backlog expands yard dwell times, reduces terminal capacity, and delays clearance, particularly for export-bound goods. On waterways, submerged or stranded containers form “silt dams,” reducing navigable depth.

In Onitsha and Warri, motorised canoes detour kilometres to skirt blockages following seasonal floods. The National Inland Waterways Authority’s own 2022 disclosures note that waterways carry 65 per cent of cargo from Lagos to the Southeast, making container clogging a freight bottleneck of national scale. For generations, communities living along the Niger, Cross River, and Rivers State waterways have relied on ferries and artisanal canoes for transport and fishing. Today, containers force longer detours and raise collision risks. Fish trap sediment and toxins accumulate in paddies. Fishermen report significant depletions of catches because of disrupted breeding grounds and habitat shifts.

Waterways slowed by container blockages compound drainage inefficiencies in cities like Lagos and Onitsha. In surges, these canals spill over, inundating neighbourhoods, farmland, and markets. Health hazards leap from water stagnation, fostering cholera, typhoid, and vector-borne outbreaks.

Families in communities like Kirikiri and Ilaje face annual permutations of risk around container clusters atop waterways.

Ebighi Frank, a canoe operator, recounts, “We navigate unseen containers; sometimes boats tip, nets are ruined, and catches drop. Fish flee the murky, stinking depths. Income halves during the flooding season.”

Moreover, reliance on container storage fosters informal economies but raises property devaluation, health risks, and social exclusion. In the absence of formal warehouse systems, impoverished families shoulder the burden of subsidising logistics through unsafe situational adaptation.

Shipping operators persistently weigh the cost of return versus the profit of abandonment. SEREC estimates that a single 4,500 TEU vessel transporting empties back to Asia or Europe would incur about $9m. The scales tip in favour of abandonment, despite the external costs borne by Nigeria, as domestic regulation fails to incorporate these negative externalities.

The Head of Research at SEREC, Eugene Nweke, in a recent document obtained by The PUNCH, explained that about 45 per cent of the containers circulating in the Nigerian shipping space fall under the classification of unseaworthy containers.

“According to freight forwarders, an estimated 65,000 to 100,000 TEUs of empty containers are currently dumped and littering Nigerian ports, posing health risks and environmental pollution. Moreover, about 45 per cent of containers circulating in the Nigerian shipping space are reportedly rickety containers that fall under the classification of unseaworthy containers,” Nweke said.

According to Nweke, Nigerian freight forwarders have long complained about the practice of shipping lines discharging laden containers in Nigeria and then sailing back to origin ports with only a few export containers, “leaving behind over 97 per cent of empty containers.”

He lamented that the practice has been attributed to the cost implications of freighting back empty containers, which has resulted in a significant backlog of empty containers in Nigerian ports.

Nweke stressed that the group conducted a review of freight forwarders’ claims “and discovered that the cost of freighting empty containers back to Europe, Asia, the US, and the Middle East from Nigeria varies greatly depending on several factors, including the point of loading, destination, carrier, and market fluctuations.”

“SEREC undertook a comparative study to determine the exact average rate for freighting back empty containers from Nigeria to China. Based on recent data, the estimated costs are a 20 ft container (full container load), $2,000-$4,000 (or £5,351-£5,914 for a different route); a 40 ft container (FCL), $3,500-$6,000 (or £10,167-£11,236 for a different route); and less than a container load, $150-$500 per cubic meter,” he explained.

Freight agents often leverage container conditions to maximise revenue, delaying returns, citing damage, collecting penalties, or taxing through extortion. At Apapa and Tincan terminals, some bonded bays have been converted into “empty container storage yards,” further incentivising the retention of unusable containers.

Also speaking, a chieftain of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, Remilekun Sikiru, told The PUNCH in a chat on Monday that empty abandoned containers at the port are part of the major challenges operators face.

“The rickety nature of empty containers in the terminals is a common issue and has a lot of disadvantages in the economy, which also affects facilitation in the import and export trade. The inefficient return of the container to the country of shipment increases the accumulation of empty containers and makes the terminals a dumping ground,” Sikiru said.

Government efforts

The Nigerian Ports Authority, as the landlord of the ports, has made frantic efforts to tackle the issue of container congestion at the ports.

Earlier in June, the NPA, in a bid to tackle these challenges, stated that a strategic use of holding bays and bonded terminals is critical to alleviating pressure on terminal capacity.

This is even as the NPA emphasised the need to be involved in the examination of holding bays to keep abreast of the potential operational challenges.

The General Manager of Corporate and Strategic Communications at NPA, Mr. Ikechukwu Onyemekara, stated this on Wednesday in Lagos during a crucial meeting with major shipping lines and the APM Terminals Apapa to discuss the challenges of the delay in the evacuation of empty containers.

Speaking further, Onyemekara noted that the shipping lines and the management of APMT have agreed to enhance the process of communicating available free pools to each shipping line to guide their container movement.

He stated that the shipping lines also blamed the congestion on a simultaneous gate closure to all the shipping lines by the management of APMT.