Despite all efforts, Apapa’s gridlock is worrying
For almost two decades, the access roads to the nation’s seaports—Tincan and Apapa—have been paralysed by container-bearing trucks, trailers and petroleum tankers’ drivers who pay scant attention to any regulations. With no holding bay for trucks and tankers, the drivers park and queue not only on the access roads but any available space. In the process what has become a daily gridlock has defied solutions. The impossible traffic condition is not only crippling commercial and industrial activities in Apapa and environs but also increasing the cost of goods from the ports as a result of the difficulties in getting them out. Besides, the hours spent on traffic on a daily basis impacted negatively on health, and productivity of many commuters.
Over the years, all the Ad hoc measures occasionally conjured up have failed to resolve the debacle. For instance, under the last administration of the late President Muhammadu Buhari, a taskforce was set up and headed by then Vice President Yemi Osinbajo. It was to develop an efficient and effective management plan for the entire port area traffic including cargo, fuel distribution, and business district traffic. It was also meant to ensure the permanent removal of all stationary trucks on the highway, and develop a manual truck call-up system, pending the introduction of the electronic truck call-up system. If anything came out of that effort, it doesn’t reflect the reality of Apapa that remains an environmental nightmare.
The unending traffic snarl is provoked by the sheer volume of articulated vehicles and tankers traversing the road that connects the two ports to lift containers and offload petroleum products, for onward transportation to other parts of the country. While some efforts have been made in the last two years to remedy the situation, illegal extortion points are now fuelling the logjam, making a free flow of traffic practically impossible. On a daily basis, commuters groan in the traffic as a journey of 30 minutes could extend for hours because trucks and tankers indiscriminately parked or abandoned on both sides of the road. Many people whose businesses are located on the axis shut them down or relocated because of the difficulties in accessing their offices.
In the past few years, we have used this platform to draw the attention of relevant authorities to the imminence of what has now become a reality: access to the nation’s major port is difficult. Motorists using the two main access roads to the town spend unbearable long hours on the traffic before they could get to their various destinations. Besides the daily dreadfulness, the loss of productive man hours is emphasised by craters and potholes on the roads, particularly during the raining season, and the raining season is here again.
What is happening in Apapa is anathema to decency in road usage. Unfortunately, years of toeing the path of impropriety and poor infrastructure development and maintenance in the energy and other sectors are having their toll on other forms of business. That explains why we have tankers of all sorts on the roads every day with all the risks they pose to other motorists. Besides, the blocking of the inland roads has caused a disruption to the urban landscape and forced many affluent citizens to abandon their properties in Apapa and relocate to other parts of the city.
Last week, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) launched a multi-agency task force to tackle the renewed traffic congestion along the Lagos port access road, in a fresh effort to restore seamless cargo movement and sustain recent gains. The intervention followed a stakeholders’ meeting convened by the managing director of the NPA, Dr Abubakar Dantsoho, where security agencies, freight forwarders, truck operators and representatives of the Lagos State Government agreed on coordinated measures to eliminate operational bottlenecks disrupting cargo evacuation. Stakeholders at the meeting identified illegal extortion points, overlapping responsibilities among security agencies and other operational distortions as major causes of the resurgence of gridlock along the port corridor.
While we have consistently called on the federal government to crack down on tanker drivers packing indiscriminately on the road while waiting to offload petroleum products in Apapa, the long-term solution is to introduce a policy that will enable patronage of ports in other parts of the country by importers. It is a scandal that Apapa, which used to command prime value for properties, considering its strategic location and primacy as a commercial and industrial hub, is now notoriously reputed for its unrelenting traffic.