The containers, some weighing more than 30 tonnes, formed a five-high barrier across the terminal’s truck lanes and a rail spur after a dispatch system sent six yard cranes into a restricted corridor. No one was hurt, but the port’s operator said the blockage delayed cargo worth an estimated ₦1.8 billion (about €1.1 million) and forced hundreds of trucks to queue outside the gates.
The incident began shortly after 01:00 on Wednesday, 23 September, hours after dispatchers walked out over pay arrears and proposed changes to machine operations. Apapa, the busy port district on Lagos’s coast, handles much of Nigeria’s container traffic. The access route was reopened at 06:20, after crews moved the boxes one by one.
How the stacks formed
The operator, the state-owned Nigerian Freight Assets Corporation, said its yard software had marked the corridor as available temporary storage. A map update had changed its status, but the revised route was not checked against the terminal’s live traffic plan. With dispatchers gone, the system continued issuing placement orders through a remote-control room staffed by contractors.
Abisola O. Leonard, the corporation’s operations director, said the six cranes followed those orders for nearly three hours before a supervisor spotted the first container in the wrong lane. “The system treated a route that must stay open as empty space. We did not catch the error until the second and third stacks were already in place,” she said.
We watched a port designed to move thousands of boxes turn its own road into a wall.
Charlott Berglund, dockworkers’ delegate
The walkout involved about 1,100 dispatch and yard workers, according to the workers’ association. Its delegates had sought written guarantees that new automated equipment would not cut shifts without consultation, as well as payment of two months of allowances. Berglund said the association had warned managers that removing dispatch staff without a tested handover could leave the machines working from stale instructions.
Ships wait outside Apapa
Carsten W. Will, an engineer advising the port authority, said the terminal had entered a “manual recovery” procedure once the blockage was confirmed. Staff halted crane movements, checked each container’s position and called in lifting teams. He said the system had not lost control of the machines; it had acted on an incorrect map, a distinction that mattered for fixing the fault but offered little comfort to waiting hauliers.
By midday, 17 ships were either waiting offshore or unable to leave their berths, the corporation said. The terminal estimated that about 620 trucks missed their scheduled collection slots. Importers of food and building materials were among those affected, though the operator said no refrigerated cargo had spoiled and no containers had been damaged.
The corporation was established last year to manage a ₦4.2 trillion (about €2.4 billion) public infrastructure portfolio, including port and rail assets. Its government-backed expansion plan has promoted automation as a way to speed cargo handling. The company now says it will suspend automated placement in restricted corridors and audit every route map before the system returns to full service.
The workers’ association said its members would remain off duty until the company agreed to a meeting and paid the outstanding allowances. Leonard said the corporation had invited delegates to talks on Wednesday afternoon and expected normal operations to resume once a safe staffing plan was agreed. Outside the terminal, trucks still lined the approach road as ship operators waited for a revised schedule.
