Gradually but steadily, gridlock is returning to Apapa roads and bridges with trucks and their drivers defying the Presidential Task Team (PTT) and, like before, taking permanent residency on the bridges.
The return of the gridlock has been blamed on a number of factors including unauthorized ‘assistance’ of security agencies who ‘pass’ trucks illegally, and the collapse of the call up system that had successfully regulated the movement of trucks into Apapa and, largely, kept them off the roads.
This, unfortunately, is coming at a time when motorists, residents and business owners in the port city are thanking God for the activities of the Task Team which had, to a reasonable extent, been able to hold the trucks at their loading bays, leading to the return of sanity in Apapa.
Some members of the Task Team who spoke to BusinessDay on phone said the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has failed to manage the call up system well. They said further that the ports authority seemed to be working at cross purposes with the Task Team to maintain sanity in Apapa.
“NPA seems to be sabotaging our efforts. They have failed to manage well the call up system. Not long ago, they locked up the Lilypond Container Terminal which has helped to keep the trucks off the roads.
“This is why many of the trucks have returned to the roads and bridges which we have been fighting against in the last six months or so. We are taking it easy with them but we expect them to see themselves as major stakeholders in Apapa cause,” the PTT member who craved anonymity, said.
According to another task team member, the port is not working now, citing one of the major terminal operators, AP Moller, which has not been working in the past two days, leading to congestion at the ports.
He said that even when the Task Team had its meeting last Monday and invited NPA, nobody from the port authority showed up “and what that told us was that they were not worried by the gridlock that has returned to the roads.”
Truck unions shared the views of the task team members, saying that the resurgence of gridlock on Eko and Ijora-Apapa Bridges was a direct consequence of failure of the NPA to effectively supervise operations within the Apapa port.
Tayo Aboyeji, Southwest Zonal spokesperson of Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) branch of Nigeria Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), told BusinessDay on phone that tanker drivers were not to blame in the fresh traffic build-up.
“We no longer have many tankers going to Apapa for petroleum products like before. This is because products are now being distributed by both the NNPC and private depots in places other than Apapa and Lagos,” Aboyeji said.
According to Aboyeji, the resurgence of gridlock on Eko and Ijora-Apapa Bridges is a direct consequence of failure of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to effectively supervise operations within the Apapa port.
“If you go to the Apapa port gate, you will see trailers queue up to enter the port. The major problem there is that they don’t have easy access to the port. That is what is causing the traffic build-up stretching to Area B’ Police Command and the bridge,” said Aboyeji.
The union leader equally identified the ‘inefficiency’ associated with the operations of APM Terminal, a major operator at the Apapa port. According to him, this terminal operator does not allow container trucks full access to their facilities even after such trucks have been cleared to approach the port.
Aboyeji also said that the efforts of the presidential task team which, in the last two to three months, had worked to restore some level of sanity on the roads in Apapa, are now being sabotaged by “some security persons in military uniform who extort tankers, especially at night to allow passage.”
However, Remi Ogungbemi, chairman of the Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), said in a telephone interview that the NPA recently introduced a new traffic management guideline to checkmate the movement of trucks coming into the Apapa port city.
According to him, the implementation of the new traffic management guideline was why port users are experiencing challenges in moving in and out of Apapa.
He said the guideline stipulates that for a truck to go to the transit parks in Ijora or Tin-Can Second Gate, the truck owner must write to the Port Manager, who would minute to the traffic manager before such truck can gate out.
“This is just to ensure orderliness and more control because it was discovered that the task team were having more than the necessary number of trucks at any particular time. The guideline is new and that is why it is causing chaos,” he said.
Ogungbemi stated that no system was perfect at the start. He said further that truckers believed that the NPA management has started seeing the hiccups caused by the new guideline, and that they were working on addressing the challenges.
Reacting to the issues raised, Adams Jatto, general manager, corporate and strategic communications of the NPA, said that the ports authority would not join issues with the Presidential Task Teams until they found out that such statement was made by the task team, which was appointed by the Federal Government to work with the NPA in addressing the Apapa problem.
“If there are issues with traffic management in Apapa, we expect the task team to call the attention of the managing director of the NPA to those issues rather than appointing accusing fingers. We would not make comment on the allegations until NPA management hears officially from the task team,” he said.
Ogungbemi called for an automated call-up system that would be generated by the system and not human beings, saying that human interference in the system does not allow the system to be efficient.
“We understand that the NPA management is working towards moving from the manual call-up that is decided by human being to automated call-up because human interference brings favouritism and special treatments for some persons,” he said.
He blamed the gridlock on the fact that people benefiting from the old system would not allow the new system to work because they are making money from the gridlock.
CHUKA UROKO, JOSHUA BASSEY & AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE
