Stakeholders seek sustainable solution to Apapa gridlock

Stakeholders comprising residents, business owners and port users have called for a sustainable solution to the multi-faceted problems confronting Apapa, Nigeria’s premier port community, in Lagos.

Tunde Balogun, a former commissioner for home affairs in the administration of Babatunde Fashola, and a resident of Apapa, who spoke at a town hall meeting hosted by Governor Akinwunmi Ambode in Lagos Island, on Tuesday, said although the deployment of task force on roads leading into Apapa was commendable and had helped traffic flow, but “it does not, however, make for a permanent solution to the myriad of problems in the area.”

According to Balogun, the sustainable solution to the issue of gridlock and other environmental challenges in Apapa will be the relocation of the tank farms, stopping tankers and trailers from parking on the roads and bridges, and reclaiming the degraded environment.

Balogun painted a frightening picture in the event of a fire outbreak around the tank farm areas, warning, “Apapa as a community sits on danger and everything must be done to avert it.

“The tank farms portend great danger to Apapa as a community with multi-billion naira investments. Trailers and tankers have invaded Apapa and this leaves the residents and businesses in hardship. The tank farms should be relocated.”

Meanwhile, respite from the gridlock is expected to come the way of motorists and businesses in the next six months, as the contractor handling the construction of a trailer park on the Apapa-Oshodi Expressway says that is the period it will take to complete and deliver the park for use.

The contractor, Borini Prono, has been on the project since the past five years when the contract for the construction of the park was awarded along with the reconstruction and rehabilitation of the expressway by the Federal Government, raising fears that the project may have been abandoned.

“We are still expecting funds from the ministry (of works) and that is what is holding the project, which is almost ready; if we get the needed funds from the ministry, we will do only six months work and the park is completed,” Franco Borini, an official at Borini Prono, assured in a telephone interview.

When BusinessDay visited the construction site recently, it was discovered that the park was largely completed along with the accompanying bridge, which begins from the Liverpool junction and empties into the park intended to free traffic on expressway.

The trailer park, situated almost directly opposite Tincan Second Gate, is a moderate parking bay estimated to take 500 trailers off the congested expressway and also free it for other road users.

Though the roads and bridges leading into Apapa are relatively free at the moment, it does not take away the feeling of apprehension in them because they could wake up one morning to see that the tankers and trailers, which give them nightmare, are back to the routes they also have a right to use.

According to stakeholders, the present ‘holiday’ does not call for celebration, more so, as long as the issues that attract the tankers and trailers have not been addressed from the roots.