I was prepared to be arrested but the Nigerian Navy officer who stopped me as I drove one-way on the Ijora Bridge heading towards Apapa must have seen the frustration on my face and decided to appeal to me instead to turn back.
For the past three months, residents, businesses and workers in Apapa had been playing hosts to over 2,000 tankers that were converging daily on the Apapa-Ijora Bridge to load petroleum products in the various tank farms in the city. Adding this to the trucks heading daily to and from Apapa and Tin Can Ports, the trucks serving the various manufacturing concerns in the city, and other private and commercial vehicles, Apapa has been in a permanent state of bedlam.
With two main entry and exit points into Apapa from Mile 2 and Ijora for these tankers, trucks, vehicles and commuters, and with the Apapa-Mile 2 road on permanent lockdown, the Ijora-Apapa axis had become a sea of frustration, anger and bitterness.
You could therefore understand my frustration as I determined that day to deliberately break the law by driving against traffic using the exit route from Apapa to Ijora as my entry route from Ijora into Apapa.
For two weeks prior to that, I had got accustomed to dropping off at the National Theatre, Iganmu and taking a commercial motorcyclist from there all the way to my office in Apapa. But alas, fumes from the exhaust of the trucks and tankers which were now permanent features on the Ijora-Apapa Bridge always left me gasping for air after each trip and I was beginning to feel heaviness in my chest.
I had also attempted using the ferry service between CMS and Apapa, and all well and good about the service and its promptness, but the limited parking for vehicles at CMS and riding on a motorcycle from the jetty at Apapa to my office had its drawbacks. When it rained the motorcycle ride from the Apapa jetty to my office would leave me soaking wet, and with the ferry service closing by 6.30pm, the crowd at the Apapa jetty returning to CMS was always a sight for sore eyes.
I had also been on the hunt for new office locations outside Apapa, but the bills I was getting were crazy further adding to my frustration and anger, then it hit me, why did I have to be the one to be on the receiving end of the bedlam in Apapa? Why was I the one to accommodate huge expenses to secure new offices outside Apapa and not those who were responsible for causing the bedlam in the first place, and who were latter-day entrants into the city?
Why was I the one to suffer the health implications of being stuck for many hours in traffic and having thousands of trucks and tankers belching out thick black exhaust fumes from their diesel engines into my delicate lungs? Why was I the one to be on the receiving end of a failed government policy on petrol subsidy that had allowed every Tom, Dick and Harry to become overnight importers and dealers in petrol in order to partake of government largess?
Why was I the one being made to suffer from the thoughtlessness of the Nigerian Ports Authority and Bureau of Public Enterprises’ decision to concession all parking spaces for trucks in Apapa and Tin Can Ports, leaving these trucks to pack on the road? Why was my life being made miserable by the decision of government to allow the Mile 2-Apapa Expressway to completely deteriorate forcing many of the tankers and trucks to come through the Ijora-Apapa axis to access the ports?
For residents in Apapa, whether landlords or tenants, the situation is probably worse as life has become nasty, brutish and hellish for them and the thousands of ‘to-let’ signs on vacant residential buildings speak volumes as they abandon the city in droves.
For workers, especially of the many manufacturing concerns and ancillary service providers in Apapa, my experience using commercial motorcyclists for two weeks between Apapa and Ijora convinced me that they were hurting really bad.
For business owners, thousands of those who can have uprooted their businesses from Apapa to other parts of Lagos and for the many others who are stuck, the losses in earnings are mounting and driving some to go burst.
But in the midst of this sea of despair, it is almost as if residents, businesses and workers are the ones at fault and who have been left to their fate to either accept their misery or relocate from Apapa. We do not have to accept this calamitous fate and can arise to reclaim our city from those who have hijacked it from us and restore the sanity and tranquillity that once existed in Apapa.
To do that, residents, businesses and workers in Apapa must come together, unite, speak with one voice and take needful action to retake our city from those who have decided to abuse our hospitality and visit us with their thoughtlessness.
The time to #SaveApapa is now.
Kingsley Omose
