Barely 48 hours after Babajide Sanwo-Olu, the governor of Lagos State visited Apapa, the port city in the state, trucks of various sizes and shapes have returned forcefully to the Ijora-Apapa bridges which, in the last couple of weeks, up to Tuesday, December 29, had been free of trucks and gridlock.
To Apapa residents and businesses, the return of these trucks leaves a sour taste in the mouth as it has punctured the respite they had seen in terms of stress-free driving experience on the bridges.
Driving through the Apapa bridge on Wednesday was very challenging as the trucks, in their numbers, had taken over more than 60 percent of the bridge from Ijora Olopa up to Marine Beach Road diversion after which the entire bridge up to Leventis was blocked.
“The trucks you see here are some of those that caused the chaos at Tin Can first and second gates that brought the governor to that axis on Monday. The governor gave a directive that all trucks that were not on call should not be parked on the newly reconstructed ports access roads,” a police officer who was struggling with controlling the trucks told BusinessDay.
The officer who did not want to be named added that the trucks might be taking advantage of the announcement by the Lagos State government that it was taking over traffic control and management in Apapa after the dissolution of the Presidential Task Team (PTT) to gain access to the ports through this route (the bridges).
Governor Sanwo-Olu had on Monday paid an unscheduled visit to Apapa to see for himself the chaos that defines traffic situation in the port city, especially at the Tin Can ports gates where congestion and gridlock have paralysed port operations, leading to loss of billions of naira by importers and exporters.
The governor’s Monday visit was his fourth to Apapa to resolve the traffic crisis in the area, yet the crisis has persistd, meaning that the governor is yet to understand the true cause of the crisis in the area.
Close watchers of Apapa gridlock and its enormous implications to the lives of residents, survival of businesses and growth of the national economy, have blamed the governor for looking away as the port city within his domain degenerates to a wasteland.
But the governor reasons differently. “This is about the fourth time which my government has been trying to address Apapa gridlock and bring sanity back to the area,” he said during the visit, recalling that, “on each occasion we had come here, we knew that there were road constructions.”
“This time around, there has been a lot of improvement and we have seen that a lot of the roads within Apapa have been completed. But, there has been no respite for commuters in terms of free traffic flow,” he noted. This means that like the vice president who chaired the disbanded PTT, the governor sees roads infrastructure as the cause of the crisis in Apapa.
Perhaps, a clearing and forwarding agent who spoke in an interview with BusinessDay, has a message for Governor Sanwo-Olu. The agent, who did not want to be named, state that corruption was at the core of the mess that Apapa has become, describing the brazen extortion that goes on in and around the port city as “an organized racketeering.”
The anonymous agent argued that the Apapa problem could be solved if vested interests, including government agencies, wanted to get it solved, dismissing any taskforce by whatever name called. According to him, any new taskforce for traffic control means increase in the cost and level of bribery on the road.
The governor disclosed that “our plan is to bring about cohesive system where all stakeholders would understand their roles and resolve challenges being encountered, noting that, “since last year, the Presidential Taskforce has been working on this issue. Now, there is a process that is starting in which the state government is taking over the task force.”
Expectation of all Apapa stakeholders is that the governor’s fourth visit would make a difference. In addition to fighting vested interests in Apapa problem, a piece of advice by Remi Ogungbemi, chairman of Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), may be instructive here.
Ogungbemi said that “the system presently being used to administer trucks into terminals, factories and jetties in Apapa has become obsolete and there is need for a change. There is need to create another system that is devoid of human interference and cannot be compromised to benefit people’s personal interest.”
