Apapa: As it was with umbrella, so it is with broom

 

One year and three months into Nigeria’s much touted ‘change’; nothing seems to have changed. At least, not in Apapa!

 

As it was in the days when a leaking umbrella could not provide cover to distraught citizens and businesses within the Apapa precincts, so it is today, with the broom unable to sweep the thorns that litter the paths that the citizens tread in and out of the ports community.

 

The broom wielding proponents of change, indeed, the most vocal critics of the ills of the umbrella, who are now directly and indirectly in charge, especially at the federal level, have gone chilly even when all is still not well with Apapa.

 

This is against all expectation that the sweeping into power at the federal level, of the same political party having the reins of power in Lagos, will facilitate a political understanding that will rub positively on the Apapa environment, given the prime role of Apapa in the economic health of the nation as the host community of Nigeria’s most patronised seaports-Tincan and Apapa Ports.

 

So far, there has been no official discourse on how to fix Apapa. And if they have plans to do so, such have not been communicated to the citizens and business owners whose perseverance amid bounty economic pitfalls, is helping to keep people at work, thereby checking increase in crime rate.

 

And if the government thinks it has no business spending money to provide an enabling environment for the private enterprises that operate from Apapa, isn’t the trillions of Naira revenues accruing to the government annually from the ports through import duties, terminal royalties and other charges enough justification to fix the decayed infrastructure?

 

If in the past this was sacrificed on the altar of politics and differences in ideology, programmes and hatred, where now lies the benefit of  political affiliation between Lagos and Abuja?

 

Seaports all over the world facilitate trade and commerce as most cargoes are delivered to import or export destinations by big vessels which berth at seaports.

 

According to Jonathan Nicole, president, Shippers’ Association of Lagos State, countries around the world invest heavily in infrastructure around their seaports.  “In countries like Sri Lanka, Togo and Cotonu, we do not see portholes on roads leading to the port but unfortunately we see gullies in Nigeria,” says Nicole.

 

“The attitude of the federal government to the state of the road means that Apapa is perpetually deprived of sanity. Ironically, these are roads where heavy duty and articulated vehicles carrying containers and other cargoes ply daily.

 

“It is sad that over one year and few months into the new government, no attention has been paid to Apapa, which regularly claim lives due to stress and man-hour spent on the roads in and out of Apapa,” Nicole adds.

 

It is no longer news that the bridge that takes traffic out of Apapa to Ijora and Lagos Island, near Area B’ Police Command, is structurally defective; the danger presently facing motorists and commuters is that the bridge is beginning to give way. The asphalt lay had since gone, exposing the iron rods beneath, with traffic now diverted from the waiting disaster.

 

JOSHUA BASSEY