Apapa gridlock: Operators want Lilypond terminal transformed into truck transit park

Worried by the menace caused by littering of trucks on the roads leading to Apapa and Tin-Can Island ports, industry stakeholders have called for the transformation of Lilypond Container Terminal in Ijora into a truck transit park.
According to them, the terminal, concessioned to private terminal operator during the port reform, should be retrieve from the hands of private operator and at the termination of concession tenure, which is not far.
Speaking in Lagos Friday at this year’s Taiwo Afolabi Annual Maritime Conference tagged, “Nigerian Port Reforms,” Vicky Haastrup, chairman, Seaport Terminal Operators Association of Nigeria (STOAN), said before the port concession in 2006 that Lilypond Container Terminal in Ijora was formerly a holding-bay that has the capacity to accommodate about 7,000 trucks, but was sadly concessioned to a private operator as an Inland Container Depot.
“Lilypond Container Terminal in Ijora was a holding-bay before it was concessioned to private sector and it has the capacity to accommodate about 7,000 trucks. Currently, the concession tenure of that terminal is running out and the Federal Government should recover the terminal and transform into a holding-bay.”
According to Haastrup, it was not in the responsibility of terminal operators to build holding-bays for trucks coming to their terminals to lift cargo, rather the responsibility lies on shipping companies that own the empty containers, which trucks queue on the road to have access into the port to discharge.
Highlighting the role of tank farm owners in reducing the menace in Apapa, Haastrup said the licences given to tank farm owners by the Federal Government through the Department of Petroleum Resource (DPR), was based on the condition that they would build a holding for trucks accessing their farms.
Haastrup, who doubles as the managing director of ENL Consortium, raised the alarm that Apapa was sitting on a time bomb, which would explode “if government does not rise up in earnest to correct the mistakes in Apapa.
“Over 60 tank farms are littered in Apapa area of Lagos and trailers going to those farms cause a lot of havoc.”
On the immediate, she advised the government to allocate lands to truck owners to enable them build transit park that would take many trucks and trailers off Apapa roads.
Henry Ajetunmobi, executive director, SIFAX Haulage and Logistics Limited, a subsidiary of SIFAX Group, while delivering the keynote speech with the theme: ‘Delivering Critical Port Infrastructure through Public-Private Partnership,’ blamed the inability of the Nigerian ports to compete with its peer in the sub-region to poor state of the infrastructure around the ports.
According to Ajetunmobi, there was need for the Federal Government to ensure the effective use of inter-modal transport system move cargo in and out of the port, which includes the use of railway, barges on sea to avoid over dependant on the roads.
He advocated for the building of light rails between Lagos to Ibadan and Ibadan-Abeokuta to reduce pressure on the roads.
AMAKA ANAGOR-EWUZIE