While President Muhammadu Buhari and 29 state governors were busy Wednesday taking oath of their new office, trailers and tankers were also busy taking positions on Apapa roads and bridges in utter defiance of a subsisting presidential order for them to vacate those places.
As early as 12 noon Wednesday, Apapa was practically impenetrable as these trucks which, by the presidency’s 72-hour ultimatum, ought to have left Apapa and its vicinity to either their private parks or the designated Lilypond Terminal only to be seen when called up, had taken over everywhere.
The Presidential Taskforce which started work last weekend was helpless or overwhelmed by the surging trucks which blocked completely Funsho Williams Avenue, Ijora connecting bridge and more than half of the main Ijora Bridge. The only way other motorists could enter Apapa was through Ijora Olopa which was not even a drive through too.
“You know the taskforce has just started work and there are bound to be hiccups. Again, what we see is a case of action and reaction,” Ayo Vaughn, chairman Apapa GRA Residents Association, explained to BusinessDay on phone.
Vaughn, who is also a member of the new presidential taskforce, explained that people who benefit from the Apapa mess might be working against the taskforce to ensure that it didn’t succeed in bringing sanity on the roads. He hoped that the situation would improve as days went by.
Motorists, however, blamed what they saw Wednesday on the inability of the taskforce to handle the situation and the penchant of some members of the taskforce to seek gratification from the people they are out to serve.
A motorist who was trapped by the gridlock on Ijora Bridge told BusinessDay how he saw members of the taskforce negotiating with truck drivers for gratification to fast-track their movement. “Two trucks immediately left and moved on as the negotiation was over,” the motorist who did not want to be named, he emphasised.
CHUKA UROKO
