Apapa gridlock and implications for productivity, competitiveness
For an average Lagos resident with a fair knowledge of the metropolis, Apapa, once described as an aquatic splendor and the city’s Biblical brook, has become a metaphor for slow motion and congestion. An otherwise flourishing business hub, Apapa on its mention immediately conjures a sense of a suffocating environment struggling to save its residents and visitors from itself.
In the face of present realities, extremists describe Apapa as a wasteland, but to Ibikunle Ogunbayo, former president of Association of Consulting Engineers of Nigeria (ACEN), it represents failure in government planning, infrastructure and transportation system.
Apapa is home to two of Nigeria’s busiest sea ports and several other businesses and the area has been so badly affected by oil and marine-related activities that navigating through its perennial traffic gridlock, which takes hours, causes pain and losses to motorists and businesses.
Though an attempt at quantifying or finding value, in monetary terms, for the losses incurred on the ‘journey’ to Apapa might amount to re-inventing the Tower of Babel, it may not be difficult to see the implications of this road captivity on productivity, competitiveness and the economy at large.
In a growing economy like Nigeria and especially in a fast-paced society like Lagos which is driven by individual and institutional enterprise, every second, minute or hour counts as a function of money, meaning that every second and minute lost is as bad as indeterminate amount of money lost.
As a business hub, the traffic to Apapa is, for want of a more appropriate description, quite heavy such that well over 10,000 vehicles conveying more than 100,000 human and material ‘cargo’ enter and leave the area six days a week and 24 days in a month on regular basis.
On the average, each of these ‘visitors’ who have their offices and businesses in Apapa spend six hours in traffic which means that each of them waste more than 50 percent of their productive hours on the road. To say that this impacts on productivity is to emphasise the obvious.
In the last couple of weeks, workers and business owners in Apapa have been literally operating from home, and those who insist on being in office at all cost pay dearly for it in terms of increased spend on car fueling, transport fares and hospital bills arising from fatigue, stress and in some cases ill-health.
What this means is that products and services coming out of Apapa cannot be competitive because where a producer or service provider in another side of town is spending, say, N1 million as his cost of production, the man in Apapa is spending over 100 percent more, making his product costlier.
Similarly, where a producer in Ikeja, for instance, is spending two days to produce 10,000 items, his counterpart in Apapa will be spending four days to produce same quantity of items because either half of his staff are held up in traffic or are down-and-out as a result of stress from traffic gridlock.
A close look at Nigeria’s recently rebased gross domestic product (GDP) shows a significant contribution of the service sector more than manufacturing and agriculture. Given that economic activities in Apapa are mainly service-driven, it means that the $510 billion GDP value is under threat because of the decline in the productivity of this economically viable part of the country.
Apart from the impact on productivity and competitiveness, marine activities have degraded Apapa environment badly, leading to heavy reduction in property value and high vacancy rate. Many people and businesses that had Apapa as their haven have relocated to safer and more profitable locations.
Chudi Ubosi, the principal partner, Ubosi Eleh & Co – a firm of estate surveyors and valuers – confirmed to BusinessDay that as a result of this unfortunate situation, property value in this area has dropped by as much as 50 percent, adding that Apapa has also seen over 40 percent vacancy rate.
He explained that in its good days, Apapa property market was ranked along with Ikeja GRA, but that is no more the case, pointing out that because of the present situation, where a parcel of land sells for N400 million in Ikeja GRA, same size of land in Apapa will struggle to sell for N200 million.
Also, about 40 percent vacancy rate shows that a good number of tenants in both residential and commercial properties have left, meaning that those who invested in property in Apapa are no longer getting returns on their investment in an asset class that ordinarily ranks next to none.
Chuka Uroko