By Job Osazuwa
The major routes leading to Apapa Wharf and Tin Can ports, which are Surulere-Western Avenue/Ijora and Oshodi-Mile Two routes, have been notorious for heavy congestion for years.
The situation further degenerated to all the link roads, making most of them inaccessible. Some trucks and tankers could be on the queue for weeks and months before getting to the port.
Chaos is the right word to describe what continued on daily basis on the axis for many years. Many landlords, tenants and business owners were forced to relocate to other areas where unaccountable man hours would not be lost in gridlock.
Successive governments did what they could to tackle the situation, but it appeared worsened by the day.
Stakeholders had repeatedly pointed out point out that corruption and vested interests have always been identified as the root of Apapa gridlock, yet the crisis continued unabated.
There have been protests in the past by residents of the affected areas, stakeholders and other interest groups towards drawing the attention of the federal and state governments to their predicament and to act fast.
However, the head of operations, Special Apapa Traffic Management and Enforcement Compliance Team, Hon. Sola Giwa, said that after a tenacious and determined effort by Lagos State government, traffic congestion at the Apapa port has drastically reduced. He said that there was now a continuous free flow of traffic contrary to what was obtainable eight months ago, before they assumed duty.
The committee took over from the defunct presidential taskforce that was set up for the same purpose. The new committee is chaired by the Special Advisers to the Governor on Transportation, Mr. Toyin Fayinka, Senior Special Adviser to the Governor on Political Security Intelligence, Ayodeji Laurent, and the General Manager of Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA), Mr Olajide Oduyoye.
He said that Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu gave the enforcement team, comprising 200 policemen, LASTMA officials, 100 men from the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) and NPA security department, the mandate to ensure that Apapa residents and businesses are able to move in and out of the port city.
He explained that the committee immediately hit the ground running to identify the various issues leading to gridlock in Apapa area while bringing an end to the practice of extortion of truck owners and drivers in the axis.
Giwa, who is also the Senior Special Assistant to the governor on Central Business District, commended the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) for cooperating with the committee to introduce the electronic call-up system (ETO) designed to sequence and batch trucks coming into Apapa and Tincan Island ports.
He stated that human interference was a major factor that unvalidated all the mechanisms employed to tackle the situation in the past.
“The port works 24 hours everyday. Trucks have to go into the wharf to pick or drop containers. More than 80 per cent of import and export transactions in Nigeria is through Lagos port. About 3000 trucks access the port everyday. To manage this kind of high traffic requires technology, which we have achieved.
“The Lagos State, the NPA, and TTP, a private firm in charge of managing ETO call-up system, have been managing the traffic going into the port. Before we came, there used to be traffic from Onipanu up to the Apapa Port while on the Mile Two axis, we used to have traffic stretching as far as Cele and sometimes up to Oshodi to the Tin-Can Port, but that is no longer the case.
“NPA approved about 30 parks to be built outside the maritime ecosystem, for truck owners where they can keep their trucks pending on when they have done the booking online and start moving to the port. There are other two central parks within the ecosystem,” he explained.
Giwa disclosed that truckers were expected to register on ETO App where they can find their wallets for payment. These approved parks are where these trucks should go before they can be called up to the port terminal, depending on the availability of space and the situation on the road.
When asked why trucks were still being parked on the major roads leading to the two ports, he said what is witnessed today is a moving traffic against the static in the past.
“Now you don’t have to meet or bribe anybody to help you pass your truck. The system does that according to availability of space. People can do the booking from the comfort of the their homes,” he said.
He lamented over what he called enforcement agents overbearing attitude as one of the issues still confronting truck operation on the axis.
He urged the Lagos State Commissioner of Police, Hakeem Odumosu to reduce the number of checkpoints between Ijora and Apapa, as well as between Mile Two and Tincan.
Said he: “The police said that the checkpoints are to monitor criminal activities, but at evey point these truck get to, the policemen don’t just extort money but disrupt the free flow of traffic in the process.
“Also, we still have bad portions on the roads, especially the high bridge that leads from Apapa to Ijora and the road from Apapa to Surulere. They are in very bad state. There also about two kilometers between MTN and Mile Two that is left undone on the Tincan axis. The government should fix that bad portion. This is major reason we still have trucks on that axis though we have also deployed mechanisms to reduce the traffic by introducing timeframe for trucks returning empty containers and the rest.
“I’m employing NPA and Nigerian Shippers Council that it was high time holding bays of the shipping lines had enough space to retain these trucks.”
He frowned at the activities of miscreants, particularly along the Mile Two, Oshodi, Amuwo Odofin routes. He argued that the National Union of Road Transport Workers (NURTW) and Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN) have no right to collect levies from truckers on the roads. He begged the CP to also wade into this.
“The tank farms should have what NPA is doing now and distribute traffic, because they are not involved in what we are doing at the moment,” Giwa said.
He also recalled how some disgruntled elements that were stopped from feeding fat on the hitherto corrupt system sponsored hoodlums in attempt to snuff life out of him.
According to him, “Change is difficult for people to accept, especially when it is taking food away from them. These people have been benefiting from the corrupt system. People were making hundreds of millions of naira from the truckers in the past.
“In fact, I was almost lynched at one of the parks. They threw a tyre at me and wanted to burn me alive. It happened in April 2021. I survived it and we are relentless in ensuring that the roads leading to the ports are totally free.
“On the bad eggs in the team, we have had cases of the officers or men of the LASTMA trying to extort money from the truckers. They were dealt with according to the law.”
When the reporter visited Mile Two axis inward Coconut Bus Stop, the drivers who said that they have been on the queue for almost 24 hours, lamented the bad portion of the road. They also decried the slow pace at which Customs and other officials at port attend to truckers.
“The situation is better than when we were spending one month on the road. Though we are not yet there, if the government continues to treat every trucker equal and no phone call is coming from above to give preference to certain trucks, things will get better,” a trucker, Isaac Enuma said.