Sanitary conditions are rapidly deteriorating in the neighbourhoods of Nigeria’s premier port, an omen announcing attendant health hazards for its inhabitants. The hoard of truck and tanker drivers and their motor assistants in Apapa area of Lagos State are contributing to this.
The truck and tanker drivers are on a simple mission. Their business is to go to Nigeria’s busiest sea port in Apapa to haul containers, petrol, diesel or gas and deliver to other parts of the country.
Over 85 per cent of ships carrying different goods, including fuel from foreign countries berth in Lagos. With this large business at Apapa sea port, trucks and tankers in different shapes and sizes sleep on Lagos roads, attempting to lift goods to the hinterland. Others are also returning containers back to the Wharf. With the bad and narrow roads associated with Apapa, these trucks and tankers cause grid-lock. In fact this has become chaotic.
Some of these drivers who want to avoid paying for parking space have turned all the roads, highways and bridges leading to the port into parking lots.
But what is more amazing is that these roads which include M2 through Coconut to Apapa, Orile-Apapa, Western Avenue, right from Ojuelegba to Apapa and Carter Bridge have not only become parking lots for the tankers and the trucks but bedrooms, toilets and bathrooms for the drivers and the other occupants in the vehicles.
The drivers and their motor assistants hardly take their bath for as long as they park on the roads. They buy water from hawkers; wash their faces and legs early in the morning and prepare for the crawling journey to Wharf. For excretion of faeces, it is done anywhere they find convenient.
“We look for public toilets but when we don’t see, we take our bath on the road early in the morning”, Ibrahim Raufu who was by the driver’s side of a numberless 40-feet truck which was lifting container to Ojota, in Lagos told BusinessDay.
“For toilet, we do it in nylon bag and throw it in a nearby bush, gutter or in any heap of dustbin”, Raufu who was relating his life as a truck driver said while giving a smile that suggests that they don’t have alternative.
He said the drivers and their assistants hardly sleep in the night or they sleep in turns for security purposes. “When one person is sleeping, the other person will be awake. If you sleep too much, thieves can remove your motor battery or other useful things. So you have to be watchful.”
Asked why his truck does not have number plate, Raufu said officials at the Wharf removed it to force them to return the empty containers. He put the cost of lifting 40-feet container from the Wharf to Ojota or Ikeja at N200,000.
For Joshua, who is a long distance driver said driving trailer is not done by one person. They alternate each time one driver is tired. He corroborated Raufu’s comment that where there is no public toilet “we find solution to it”. But while traveling on the highway, outside Lagos, they can stop to ease themselves in any bush, he said.
Apart from logistics and other challenges in quick loading of trucks and tankers that come from various states to the ports, the lockdown on Apapa road is worsened by the current re-construction of some major roads and other minor roads which necessitated the closure of some roads in Apapa.
Presently, some of the tankers now go through streets such as Ajegunle to get to Apapa. This has equally become frustrating to residents in those areas including Ijora as some of the trucks have parked for a long time in those areas, constituting nuisance on the streets.
Obviously backed by powerful individuals who are owners of the trucks, the truck drivers are daring, intimidating anyone including police and other traffic officials who dare to challenge them. It takes the force and the wielding of guns and ‘koboko’ (canes) by the army and Navy to control them. The consequence of the weight of the trucks and tankers on the bridges is yet to be ascertained.
Meanwhile, as long as the grid-lock continues on the roads leading to Apapa, the gutters and the dustbin heaps will serve as toilets for the truck drivers.
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