In Nigeria, when political leaders and government functionaries are not exhibiting tribal sentiments, they must be lying or they are being hypocritical, giving the impression that all is well even in a messy situation.
Nowhere and at no time has this been better demonstrated than in Apapa, Lagos, as the nation’s commercial capital prepares for the visit of Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president and candidate of the ruling All Progressives Congress, who is coming to the state to canvass votes ahead of the presidential polls on February 16.
Apapa in the last five to six years has garnered notoriety for its congestion and gridlock caused by heavy influx of tankers and trailers which have, within this period, occupied all bridges and roads leading to the port city with spillover effect on the surrounding areas such as Surulere, Yaba, Lagos Island, Oyingbo, etc.
One task-force after another has been set up to rid Apapa of its breath-taking gridlock without success. Everything seemed to have come to a head when Acting President Yemi Osinbajo flew into Apapa in July 2018 and gave a 72-hour presidential order to the trucks to vacate the roads and bridges, but the trucks remained adamant and nothing happened.
Today, that jinx has been broken. Because Buhari, a presidential candidate, is coming to solicit the votes of Lagosians, all the trucks are off the roads such that not even a single one is seen. Indeed, those already in Lagos have been forced to leave while others still on their way have been barred from entering the city.
As it is today, from Maryland through the whole stretch of Ikorodu Road into Apapa through Western Avenue or Eko Bridge, the roads are free and free indeed. The questions on every lips now are: Where have all the trucks gone to? Who ordered them to vacate? What made them obey?
Two things are playing out here. One is that it is possible to make Apapa a sane environment if government really wants to make that happen. The impression the federal and Lagos State governments have always given to the Apapa residents and business owners in the port city is that their case is helpless.
Many businesses in Apapa have died. Others strong enough to cope with the excruciating pains of staying back are doing so at great cost, yet government, which rakes in stupendous revenue from the ports and collects tenement rates from residents whose houses have lost their value, looks away.
The second thing playing out here is that Apapa is in a mess because some vested interests want it to be so because they are benefitting from it. These interests dictate what happens in the port city. When it serves their interest, they can force the trucks out of the way.
It amounts to hypocrisy and self-deceit that a messy situation like Apapa is cleaned up for a presidential candidate who, in a more orgainsed society, should be made to come face-to-face with the real problems of the people whose votes he is seeking to win election.
With what has been done by APC as a party or Lagos State government or both, Buhari will never believe that to move from Ikeja, the state capital, to Apapa takes over four hours on a good day. He will find it difficult to believe that many Apapa residents have had to flee their homes to become tenants in other parts of the state; that the national economy is at great risk because of Apapa problem.
Apapa harbours the country’s two busiest seaports that account for about 75 percent of all the export and import activities in the country. Many importers now prefer to clear their cargo in neighbouring countries because doing that through Apapa ports is no longer profitable and sustainable.
Though this development shows how low Nigerian leaders regard their people and how little their responsibility to them are, the truth remains that both the people and the government are losers in the mess that Apapa has become.
But now that government has demonstrated that it can be done, residents, motorists, business owners and sundry workers are saying, “Let Apapa work again!”
Chuka Uroko
