Apapa: Why traffic situation has improved and few trucks are on bridges
But for occasional breaches and hiccups, traffic situation in Apapa, home of Nigeria’s two busiest seaports, has been relatively calm and motorists-friendly with the roads and bridges largely free of trucks that had made those routes their resting place.
That has been the case in the last seven to eight days. Apapa-oshodi Expressway, another major route to the ports, is also largely free of trucks up to Mile 2 Bridge.
But the situation is not an accident of fate as some think, decisions and deliberate efforts have gone into creating it.
“The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) is now making sure that, at the port level, the manual call-up system is being properly handled by the Port Manager such that if a truck has no business to be at the Lagos Port Complex, it can’t have access into the port,” Jatto Adams, general manager, corporate and strategic communications at NPA, explained to BusinessDay on Monday.
Adams said, on their part at NPA, they try to ensure that there is full compliance and if a trucker is not asked to come and he comes, he would not gain access into the port.
“This has given us some mileage so that by the time we commence the electronic call-up, everybody will join, and we will have sanity in Apapa,” he hoped.
The Authority has given the Lilypond Terminal to private company to operate, he disclosed, saying NPA was sensitising ports stakeholders and informing them that the new operator would take responsibility for managing the call-up system, which is going to be electronic.
At the Lilypond Terminal, he said, a lot of things were happening at the moment, citing civil engineering works that would enable the operator structure the terminal with the hardware equipment needed for its effective management.
A police officer, apparently part of the Presidential Task Team (PTT) on Apapa gridlock, had told BusinessDay at his duty post that the reason for the improved traffic situation and the absence of a large number of trucks on the bridge was because they were now more resolute in controlling truck movement.
He alluded to the call up
system he said was being used to check truck movement, but could not explain whether the system was manual or electric. Though he could not bet on the sustainability of the present situation, the police officer hoped it would improve incrementally.
On his part, Kayode Opifa, PTT’S executive vice chairman, had explained to Businessday that the present situation was a natural consequence of when people decided to do the right thing.
“When you do the right thing, you get the right result,” he said, alleging that it was the abuse of the call up system that caused what people always refer to as gridlock in Apapa. “But, as far as I am concerned, there is no gridlock in Apapa. What we have here is occasional traffic hiccup which happens everywhere,” he insisted.
For over a decade now, Apapa has become a byword for gridlock caused by heavy influx and indiscriminate parking of trucks from all over Nigeria, which come for either wet or dry cargo in the premier port city.
Their unwholesome and uncontrolled activities coupled with government’s less than half a measure attention given to the development of the port city is the reason many businesses and residents have left the city for saner environments.
One taskforce after another has been set up by government, the last being the PTT, to deal with the Apapa problem without results. This failure has been attributed variously to corruption, vested interests, poor infrastructure, and the port being too small for the volume of business activities it handles.