Tackling Apapa gridlock

An otherwise nour- ishing environ- ment by virtue of its aquatic and maritime activities, Apapa has become a wasteland, impoverishing its inhabitants by killing their businesses and destroying their environment, no thanks to the unwholesome activities of reckless and mind- less tanker and trailer drivers who park indiscriminately on any available space on roads and bridges leading into and out of this city that houses two of the nation’s busiest seaports – Tin Can Island Port and the Lagos Ports Complex (LPC). Commuters, residents, business owners, port opera- tors and sundry workers take a daily dose of stress, jitters, and frustration on all the routes to Apapa.

Recently, the Apapa GRA Residents Association raised an alarm that due to the seemingly intractable gridlock, businesses are shutting down and new business investments are being lost, properties worth billions of naira are without use, residents are relocating out of Apapa en masse, houses up for let abound as nobody is renting, while the real estate business is dead in Apapa.

The situation has continued to worsen in spite of several government-led attempts at resolving the menace.

In the heat of the lockdown last year, the Federal Government summoned a stakeholders’ meeting chaired by Sylvester Monye, then chairman of the Presidential Taskforce on Monitoring, Perfor- mance and Evaluation.

The meet- ing was attended by the Lagos State government represented by the then state commissioner for transportation, Kayode Opeifa, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), Nigeria Union of Petro- leum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD), National Associa- tion of Road Transport Owners, Federal Ministry of Works (FMW), Petroleum Products Pricing and Regulatory Agency (PPPRA), Petroleum Products Marketing Company (PPMC), Apapa resi- dents, among others.

Among other agreements, the stakeholders said that NPA and NSC should strengthen the existing call-up system which would help to regulate the volume of trucks on the road, mandating both agencies to not only ensure compliance, but also to fast-track turnaround in cargo delivery at the ports.

But, sadly, these agreements did not survive one week before they col- lapsed and the trucks were back to business-as-usual and nobody turned back to ask why.

Not too long ago, pained by the ugly situation, the Lagos State government under former Governor Babatunde Fashola is- sued a 48-hour ultimatum to the tanker drivers to vacate all roads leading to Apapa.

Expectedly, this directive was complied with, but there was a relapse to status quo ante – or an even worse scenario – within the next few days.

Only recently, Akinwunmi Ambode, the new state governor, convened a fresh meeting of stakeholders to identify causes of this unfortunate situation with a view to working out an enduring solution to the menace.

In our view, the Apapa grid- lock has persisted because all the efforts by the different levels of government so far to tackle it have at best been cosmetic and half-hearted and so have only provided a temporary relief.

We are yet to see a genuine effort to bring a lasting solution to the perennial problem.

The Lagos State government long ago identified the key factors responsible for Apapa gridlock to include failure of the NPA to prop- erly manage the ports, failure of NNPC to properly handle fuel distribution, bad roads not fixed by Federal Ministry of Works, transporters’ indiscretion, failure of enforcement, and irresponsible location of tank farms in Apapa.

An estimated 56 tank farms are located in Lagos State alone, and 35 of these are located within Kirikiri and Trinity axes on Wharf/ Tin Can road.

For us, therefore, a permanent solution to the Apapa nightmare lies in making the refineries func- tional to reduce importation of petroleum products, which will reduce the convergence of tankers at the various ports; improving the reliability and safety of pipelines nationwide as a most-efficient and cost-effective mode of mov- ing petroleum products across the nation; and relocation of the tank farms out of Apapa.

More importantly, there is an urgent need for a commercial freight rail line that would link Apapa port to other parts of the country.

Apapa port accounts for 30 percent of cargo throughput in the Nigerian seaports, but cargoes are conveyed by obsolete and rickety heavy-duty trailers in and out of the port to other parts of the country where commercial and private commuters are regularly confronted by high traffic occa- sioned by daily cargo round trip movement.

A recent BusinessDay report quoted economic analysts as saying that Nigeria may be los- ing as much as N500 billion year- ly to dysfunctional commercial freight rail service linking Apapa to other parts of the country, which would have reduced downtime and improved cargo turn-over.

We recall that in August 2013, there was an attempt to revive container evacuation by rail from the Apapa Container Terminal in the Lagos Ports Complex (LPC).

Nearly two years after, however, the train service from the port has remained epileptic, with one trip of less than 20 containers hardly achieved on weekly basis.

A commercial freight locomotive has the capacity to carry about 40 containers on one trip.