The planned opening of the Lilipond Terminal and the Trailer Park in Apapa on Thursday and Friday respectively this week has been commended by stakeholders, especially residents, business owners and port users, as a major step towards solving the gridlock and congestion problems that have become unmistakable features of Apapa in Lagos.
The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) which disclosed this plan at a stakeholders meeting in Apapa on Monday explained that the Lilypond Terminal would be made available to service trucks carrying containers that have business to do in Apapa port while the Trailer Park will be serving trucks going to Tin-Can Island Port.
Expectedly, these parking spaces will help to decongest the roads and bridges by taking away the trucks which are parked indiscriminately by their mindlessly drivers. While the Trailer Park has capacity for about 400 trucks, the Lilipond Terminal will be accommodating over 1,000 trucks.
The Senate Committee on Works had, at an expanded stakeholders meeting last weekend, committed to ending the congestion and gridlock in and around Apapa, assuring that they would employ every means possible to enforce measures put in place to end the Apapa embarrassment.
But concerns remain. Since after the visit Acting President Yemi Osinbajo in July 2018, Apapa roads and bridges have become one huge corruption centre where numerous checkpoints manned by all categories of uniformed men make large sums of money per minute per minute through extortion.
Osinbajo came and left a lameduck 72-hour presidential order, directing a taskforce that was set up immediately, comprising the Nigerian Navy, the Army, the police, Federal Roads Safety Corps (FRSC), Lagos State Traffic Management Agency (LASTMA) and other stakeholders, to clear the Apapa gridlock.
The presidential order never worked, but the taskforce remained, waxing stronger and has, today, become a phenomenon nurtured and sustained by brazen and mindless extortion of truck owners and their drivers who, after days on the road, cannot but acquiesce to the demands of the road ‘merchants’.
By the last count, about 10 checkpoints from Western Avenue to Apapa Port and more than 15 checkpoints from Mile 2 to Tin-Can Island Port manned by security operatives have been identified.
A port operator who pleaded anonymity estimates that the security operatives at the checkpoints make as much as N150 million from truck owners, given that about 3,000 trucks which visit the port weekly pay as much as N50,000 each to fast track access into the port.
Ogungbemi, chairman, Association of Maritime Truck Owners ( AMATO), noted that the gridlock and congestion in Apapa were as a result of the collapse of the truck call up system arising from human intervention and manipulation. “The system is being sabotaged by corrupt practices,” he stressed.
These are major sources of the concerns being raised by the stakeholders who reason that, people who make the kind of money the make from a rotten system which Apapa has become, will do anything possible to ensure that such a system persists and to frustrate any solution to leading to and to it.
“Opening the two terminals to take trucks off the roads and bridges is a good development in the search for solution to Apapa problem, but there is a missing link and that is the monumental corruption that has ensured Apapa does not work,” a business owner who pleaded anonymity, noted.
“Frequently, we hear President Buhari tell us that as you fight corruption, corruption fights back. If that observation is anything to go by, how are we sure that the corruption going on now in Apapa will not fight back if the perpetrators are asked to leave the scene, which is the next best thing to do now,” the business owner asked rhetorically.
Though NPA has assured that it would come up with an integrated call-up system to be generated and managed by them, stakeholders are calling for a more sustainable system that would ensure that the opening of the two terminals serves the purpose.
Road users have been assured that when the military and other uniformed personnel are disbanded from mounted checkpoints, a new taskforce would be set up by the NPA to enforce the new measures. Ihenacho Ebubeogu, general manager, security, at NPA, disclosed that, in the interim, traffic in and out of Apapa would be managed by LASTMA, police, FRSC and the NPA security officials.
CHUKA UROKO
