By 4 pm on Friday, February 26, 2021, no articulated vehicles (trailers and tankers) will be allowed into Apapa, Nigeria’s premier port city.
This is part of resolutions reached by the Lagos State Task Team, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), port authority police and Lagos State police, preparatory to the deployment of the e-call up a system for traffic management and control in Apapa.
The new call up system (Eto App) which will be deployed on Saturday, February 27, 2021, is expected to reduce, if not eliminate, human influence and manipulation which have been the bane of traffic gridlock in the port city.
The Lagos Task Team, NPA and their police also resolved that the existing call-up system will discontinue, adding that all manual call up already issued expires tomorrow, Friday, February 26 by 1200hours.
The group said too that about the expiration of all call up already issued, until 12000hours on Saturday, February 27, when the new call up system will commence, there will be no truck movement into Apapa.
“Before e-call up commences on Saturday by 1200hours, all trucks in and around the port access roads have to vacate,” the resolution warns truck owners and their drivers.
The Lagos State government and the management of NPA, had, at a meeting in Alausa on Tuesday, warned trucks drivers against packing on the highways or any approach to the Apapa port corridor as part of efforts to control truck movement into the port city.
The duo, however, assured Lagosians that from Saturday on, movement of trucks in and out of the Lagos seaports would be organised through the call-up system that would be based on first-come-first-serve.
The expectation is that, with the new system, no container-laden truck would come to Apapa corridor without clearance from the call-up platform. “Any truck that flouts the electronic roster and parks along Apapa corridor will be impounded by the Taskforce,” Lagos and NPA warned.
