Apapa gridlock: Lagos, NPA look away as businesses bleed

Lagos State government and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) appear to be looking the other way as commuters groan and businesses bleed following a forceful return of the Apapa gridlock.

As commuters groan under severe stress arising from long hours in traffic, businesses in the port city are bleeding with declining productivity and shrinking revenue as their workers and managers spend their productive hours in traffic. Many of them sometimes don’t succeed in getting to work.

Evidently, Apapa has come back to square one and that is talking about pre-Presidential Task Team (PTT) era when the port city was impenetrable because of traffic congestion that sent commuters to hospitals and killed businesses.

Many commuters, who have been spending more than four hours in traffic in the last one week trying to enter Apapa to work or transact one business or another, say the situation is even worse now than before. It has been terribly bad since Monday this week.

Many business engagements are either cancelled or put off indefinitely because of the worsening traffic situation in this part of Lagos, Nigeria’s sprawling commercial nerve centre which prides itself as ‘centre of excellence.’

“I left my house in Magodo by 9.45 am and I have just arrived Apapa. This is 1.30 pm. The appointment I have come to keep is no longer possible because my client has left office after waiting endlessly for me,” Kayode Oluwatoyin, a property broker, told our correspondent.

Like other commuters, Apapa residents, and businesses, Oluwatoyin does not understand what may have happened to the electronic call-up system which the NPA, working in partnership with the state government, introduced to control truck movement into Apapa.

Read Also: Apapa gridlock: Lagos works on long-term solutions as economy bleeds

Before now, concerned stakeholders had asked if the call-up system had collapsed. Lagos, speaking through its commissioner for transportation, Fredric Oladehinde, insisted that the system was working even with daily heavy traffic congestion on every route that leads to Apapa.

NPA, on its part, had alleged sabotage, explaining that some truckers were fording their call-up papers.

A major source of worry is that the call-up system, which has since collapsed, has forced many of the trucks to park indiscriminately in all nearby locations to Apapa, especially in Surulere, Oyingbo, Yaba and adjoining roads such as Ikorodu Road, Lagos Badagry Expressway, Ikotun-Ejigbo-Isolo Road, etc.

The congestion on these routes is caused by the location of truck parks and bonded terminals in these areas as part of the implementation of the electronic call-up system.

“I am surprised that Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is still foot-dragging in carrying out his threat to “name and shame” those who, according to him, would be working against the successful implementation of the call-up system. Is it possible he is unaware of the situation on Apapa roads,” Austin Mbamalu, a clearing agent, queried.

Mbamalu was all the more surprised that NPA, which is at the centre of it all, appears not to care that, like before, trucks are finding it very difficult to access the ports, wondering if the ports authority is under the illusion that everything was okay on the roads.

“As I am standing with you here, I am stressed out; I have been in traffic in the last four hours just to get to Apapa port gate. As it is, I won’t be able to do anything again today because there is no more time left for me to do something meaningful. You see, this is how businesses die here,” he lamented.

Though some Lagos State government officials say the state does not have the capacity required to deal with Apapa problem, Mbamalu says the state can enforce compliance to the call-up system if it wants to, explaining that if the state mobilizes both the police and LASTMA officials, it can do so much.

He, therefore, called on both the state government and NPA to rise to the occasion and repeat the success story they recorded in the first three days of implementing the call-up system. “They have demonstrated that it can be done, let them do it again,” he pleaded.