…want customs, Lagos taskforce operatives out of way for traffic flow
…cautions on danger in trucks parked on bridges
CHUKA UROKO
The on-going reconstruction work on the 2-kilometre Apapa-Wharf Road will be completed as scheduled, Aliko Dangote, the President and CEO, Dangote Group, has assured.
The reconstruction of the road that leads to the Apapa and Tin Can Island Ports is being undertaken by Dangote Group, Nigerian Flour Mills Limited and the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA), who are together committing N4.34 billion to the project.
The project has a 12-month completion period which will elapse July 2018, but the progress of work has been challenged by the relocation of electric and gas pipelines and poor traffic management. Some of the pipelines have been successfully relocated by engineers from the Federal Ministry of Works. The traffic situation has however been chaotic and motorists, port users, site workers and ministry of work officials have blamed this on the activities of security agencies and the Nigerian Customs Service.
Aliko Dagote who was on an inspection tour of the project site Wednesday morning, said he was impressed with the progress and quality of work being done by AG Dangote, the contractor handling the reconstruction of the road.
“My impression of this road has changed because AG Dangote is doing a great and excellent work here. You can see the quality of work being done. This is quite impressive. Even in Germany you cannot see this kind of quality of road. This road can last at least two generations, in which case you will be talking about over 60 years. It is so solid that it can take any weight and any traffic”, Dangote enthused.
He decried the identified challenges, but said that with the gas pipelines out of the way, “I can assure you that we will double our efforts to complete the project on schedule, latest by the end of June; we will surprise you because this is going to be the first time a contractor will deliver a road project on schedule or even before the scheduled date”, he said.
“We are also pleading with the government to move the taskforce away from this place, including the customs. If they want to set up a road block, I think this is a wrong place to do so; people do not really understand how much money businesses are losing because of the gridlock here; if you quantify it in billions, it is 20 times the cost of this project lost every single day”, he noted, adding, “we want only the police, LASTMA and FRSC to be left here to manage the traffic; we are really going to write formally to government to ensure that this is done”.
He stressed that it did not make any commercial sense for customs to mount check points outside the wharf after they might have checked and certified goods at the ports, arguing that “if there should be any more checkpoints, they should be at the toll gates, not here where they are obstructing traffic flow”.
Dangote also commended the palliative work going on the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway and the Trailer Park that is under construction by government on the expressway, pointing out that there were efforts being made to ensure that the access roads to the ports are decongested.
He disclosed that his company would be undertaking the reconstruction of the expressway and the quality of the road would not be any different from the solid concrete road being done on Apapa-Wharf Road.
He warned of the danger in parking trucks on bridges, saying, “we must make sure we decongest this place because it is very dangerous. The trucks are stationary on the bridges and these are supposed to be passing weight and not static weight. We really need to check the stability and integrity of those bridges to avert possible danger”.
