Apapa Gridlock: Presidential Team to Meet Residents Today

The Presidential Task Team on the decongestion of Apapa gridlock would hold a town hall meeting with all Apapa residents today.

Disclosing this in a statement issued yesterday, the team’s Vice Chairman, Kayode Opeifa said the meeting scheduled to hold at the St Andrew’s Anglican Church Hall on Oscar Ibru Way, former Marine Road is aimed at generating better ways of sustaining the successes of the team and keeping the traffic on Apapa and its environs flowing.

The statement said: “the meeting will enable all residents to come up with how to keep the traffic in Apapa moving as well as intimate them on efforts and plans to resolve the perennial traffic challenges.”

President Muhammadu Buhari had on May 23, issued a Presidential Order giving all trailer and tanker drivers and operators 72 hours to evacuate all roads and bridges leading to Apapa ports.

The president with the order mandated a Task Team headed by the Vice President, Prof. Yemi Osinbajo, to restore order and discipline on Apapa roads and ensure the drivers complied.

The committee’s initial two weeks terms of reference, ended on June 12, and had to be extended and mandated to continue to work until the entire area is sanitised.

Opeifa said the team has achieved appreciable success on its terms of reference.

“What remains is for the Nigeria Ports Authority (NPA) to put more efforts at enforcing the traffic regulation at Apapa and to ensure that the truck transit parks at Lilypond and the Tin Can Transit park to work as intended and maximise the call-up system that is now in place to be fully operational.

“We also called on the leaders of the various transport unions; such as the Coalition of Maritime Transport Unions Association (COMTUA), Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria (RTEAN), National Association of Road Transport Operators (NARTO), and Association of Maritime Transport Owners (AMARTO), to manage their drivers,” Opeifa added.