Once again, trailers and tankers have overrun Apapa, thereby re-enacting the ugly scenes and suffocating experiences that existed before the coming of the subsisting presidential task team set up to clear the gridlock that defines Apapa, Nigeria’s premier port city.
As at Monday and Tuesday, road users had it pretty difficult accessing the port city through any of the routes.
At the moment, the hapless residents, business owners and other road users are confused as to the cause of the present situation after what has turned out now as a momentary relief occasioned by the activities of the task team which forced the rampaging trucks into public and private holding bays.
As at Wednesday last week, the major task of the team was the trailers who were pushed to the roads and bridges following the closure of the Lilypond Transit Park by the authorities of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), citing destruction of the facility by hoodlums a couple of weeks ago.
How the tankers came to join the fray, occupying every available space in and around the port city, remains a mystery. Both NPA and the task team say they cannot explain and therefore not responsible.
But close watchers of events in Apapa as they pertain to traffic control know that the NPA and the task team are merely playing the ostrich as they differ on approach to truck movement to the ports.
The task team is, however, less economical with the truth. “There are issues, no doubt about that; we should be telling ourselves the honest truth,” Kayode Opeifa, executive vice chairman of the presidential task team, said last week.
Some truck owners who spoke to BusinessDay blamed the NPA for creating the chaos on the road, citing inefficient operations for the presence of many trucks parked on the roads and bridges.
But Adams Jatto, NPA spokesman, told BusinessDay on phone that the authority would not trade blames with the task team over the return of traffic congestion in Apapa.
Jatto, who is general manager, corporate & strategic communications of the NPA, however, admitted that there has been an increase in the number of tankers coming into the private jetties around Apapa to lift petroleum products, saying “the NPA is not responsible for” that.
“We do not have any issues with the Presidential Task Team because we have to work together,” Jatto said last week. “Rather than shifting blame, it is better for us to know the remote cause of the traffic.”
He said there were issues with the Lilypond Transit Park, and because of the recent fire incident there, the park was shut down temporarily from doing business.
The spokesman said the petroleum tankers were under the Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), not within the responsibility of the NPA. He assured that the authority was making plans to determine how the tankers can be better managed.
But NUPENG says the petroleum tankers on the roads and bridges inward Apapa are those trapped in the gridlock, blaming the gridlock on the unpatriotic activities of key institutions and individuals within the maritime sector.
Afolabi Olawale, NUPENG’s general secretary, specifically highlighted the failure of the NPA, the concessionaires and security personnel deployed to manage the situation in Apapa and within the port.
“Petroleum tankers do not enter the ports because they do not lift fuel within the ports, but they drive into Apapa to lift products from fuel depots. Fuel depots are not inside the ports. So tankers are not responsible for the clustered roads. Rather, tanker drivers are themselves victims of the situation because they spend several hours on the road trying to access depots,” Olawale said.
The situation in Apapa, according to him, resulted from NPA and port concessionaires not allowing containerised trucks easy access into the ports, thereby causing backflow of traffic snarls to the bridge.
“There is no running away from the truth. NPA is not in control. It does not have parking space for trucks and is yet unable to come up with appropriate schedule for the trucks to enter Apapa,” said Olawale.
However, BusinessDay gathered from a reliable source that at a meeting with the task team on Monday, NUPENG committed to withdrawing its trucks from the roads beginning from Tuesday (yesterday).
Expectation is, therefore, high that beginning from today (Wednesday), reprieve may come the way of motorists.
Whatever the case or whoever is at fault, Lagosians, especially those who live or have business to do in this part of town, are crying out to those that can restore normalcy and sanity to Apapa.
Besides long travel time and rising cost of accessing Apapa, people’s businesses are dying; investments and means of livelihoods, especially real estate assets, are wasting and losing value while the owners watch helplessly. Also, Apapa economy is dying and that holds a lot of implications for the government.
Before the present situation degenerated to the point where it is now, the task team had been complaining that its efforts were being sabotaged by some vested interests. It also complained of not getting enough cooperation from NPA which is a major stakeholder in Apapa.
“Some people have made so much money from the crisis in Apapa that they won’t let it go. So, they are shortchanging the system. What we see is corruption fighting back,” Opeifa had said.
“The people we have prevented from the regular ‘chop-chop’ are busy spreading wrong information about us and trying to frustrate the current efforts, but we are determined to make the system work again,” he had assured.
That determination is passing through an acid test and Apapa residents, business owners, motorists and sundry visitors expect the presidential task team and other stakeholders, particularly NPA, to pass this test.
CHUKA UROKO & JOSHUA BASSEY
