Do you know a ‘Red Sea’ exists at Apapa port and that trailer and truck drivers pay as much as N60,000 to cross it? Even after you crossed the Red Sea, you still spend between five to eight days to get to the ‘promise land’ – the Port. In this chat with our Correspondent Adeyinka Aderibigbe, the Executive Vice Chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Restoration of Law and Order in Apapa speaks on sundry issues. Excerpt.
How far has your committee gone in clearing Apapa of traffic gridlock in line with the Presidential Order?
There are things on which I am limited to speak though I am the Executive Vice Chairman, when my chairman (the Vice President) has spoken when he last visited the site. I can only speak on the extent of work. We believed we could have gone far but the rain stopped us virtually all through the week, but despite the rain, we have been moving out all through the night, which have assisted us in making some inroad. From where the VP left us, we have additional 500 metres clearing into Mile 2 and we are just about 500 metres from where we are to hit Mile 2 on the out bound on the inbound, we are about one kilometre from Mile 2 to where we had cleared up. By the time we open Mile 2 our own terms of reference would have been fully accomplished. These are: Restoration of law and order. Second is enthroning a traffic management direction as well as a traffic management plan to handle wet, dry cargo and citizens’ mobility. We are to stamp out extortion, helping the port to develop a manual call up system pending the time the electronic one will come up. We are to restore normal vehicular traffic on all these axis.
Can you say law and order are now restored in Apapa?
As of today, we have restored law and order on Costain, Iganmu, down to Apapa Wharf. We have restored law and order on Costain-Iganmu to Mile 2 end of Badagry express, not Mile 2 itself but its end where they call Suuru Alaba. We have also resolved Creek Road to Port gate reasonably, but not completely. The axis that is left substantially is the Mile 2 to the Tin Can Port. From the Tin Can Port to Coconut we have restored law and order; it was a very terrible restoration that we have battled with. We were confronted with residents brandishing cutlasses and petrol from residents of Ajeromi who felt we are trying to destroy their businesses. Youths of Ajeromi LCDA came out with brand new cutlasses to attack us. They said they are the ones responsible for moving trucks against traffic. They are the ones collecting money from trucks moving against traffic by uniform personnel and some area boys all the way from Mile 2, passing the service lanes for the outbound in front of Trinity Police station. When they completely filled that side, they now started moving them through Otto wharf inside the neighbourhood and they are collecting money from them. So they fought. Because we know they are youths of the area we engaged them the next day and they came and they apologized. That is one of the many stakeholders’ engagement. The stakeholders that we dealt with are not just the operators; it includes the people doing the business of lawlessness. There’s also a Baale in the area who played a prominent role in helping us with the engagement. The whole of that axis, all the houses on Apapa – Oshodi Expressway on the way out to the right were filled with trucks and the youths of the area saw a need to make money from them. In fact, some people even make fake tickets, impersonating the local governments, and I think the local government chairman has taken control of that. We commend the Chairman of Ajeromi/Ifelodun LCDA for taking control of that situation. You can see that the problem is so complex that citizens who are complaining are themselves making money and business out of the confusion in Apapa. For us to stop the drivers plying one way and frustrating those who are collecting money from them, we have to start digging holes to make it inaccessible to trailers but, we are told some uniformed personnel came midnight with heavy planks to lay on the trenches we dug to make a thoroughfare for those they have collected money from. We have gone back there to remove it. While we were doing it we even saw them in vehicles with stickers of some security formations, but whenever they see our police team headed by Police Commissioner Hakeem Odumosu, they relax but they never ran away. We have apprehended many uniformed personnel along the corridor and we have always asked them to go back peacefully that the game is over, that we have presidential directive. The Navy in the Western Naval Command has being cooperating with us and I must tell you the axis where we have this problem most is Apapa-Oshodi-Apapa-Ajegunle axis where there are plenty of military formations. I don’t need to mention them. Our appeal is to the leadership of these military formations to show interest and call their men to order. Even when we go out people confide in us that the task forces are still around and they still go about collecting money from truckers. The remnants are what we are appealing to these military authorities to help put under control. To the best of our knowledge on the corridor we have ensured that we tell all truckers that you don’t need to pay anybody. But there are drivers who are still extorting their owners and employees. For examples the freight forwarders are the ones who contract the transport companies, the transport companies owns the drivers, we still see drivers calling their base saying they are still asking them to bring N60,000, when in fact they have asked them to bring maybe N20,000 or N40,000.
Read also: Lagos issues traffic advisory on Apapa, shuts ports roads for three-day palliative work
Who are the stakeholders and members of the committee?
Let me mention the stakeholders. The number one stakeholder of this project is the federal government and the Nigerian people. Number two is the Lagos State Government, Apapa residents and Lagosians, three is NPA, four is Shippers Council, five, freight forwarders, six, the shipping companies, seven the terminal operators, eight the trucking companies, nine the truck drivers, and all other business concerns. We are representing the federal government, but the committee that was set up by the President ordered that the Vice President must go into Apapa and get this resolved once and for all based on earlier held meetings with some or all these stakeholders in the last two years. You know there’s also a presidential Business Enabling Council headed by the vice president, that committee too have always been working on ease of doing business, especially in Apapa. Apapa is key because, I believe that if you remove Apapa, Nigeria will go into recession. The port holds the mainstay of the customs revenue. Customs is a major revenue earner for our economy, port revenue again I think is number two or three, now we learn Diaspora earnings is number one. Oil is number two, so port is most likely to be number three. So you can imagine if we take that out. Goods will not come into the market, there will be scarcity, there may be inflation and so many other economic distortions may happen, so we have to make sure the port operation is maintained. We have to ensure that we resolve the gridlock, that we make the residents comfortable and make sure that truckers operate in a very nice environment. So the job is a complex, complicated but possible one. So we went strategically. We issued our operational guidelines, and we started discussing with individual stakeholders and kept modifying it. This is the basis upon which we have worked on Apapa in the last one month plus. It is simple. A traffic management direction was given solve Apapa Wharf to prove a point then move to Mile 2 to complete. So we used Apapa wharf as a model. So after the 72 hour ultimatum, only 20 percent of the truckers left the road. They wanted to leave, but they cannot leave. They have passed what they called ‘Red Sea’. We gave it that name because we gathered that before you can pass that place they must have spent about N65,000 and until you pass that place you can’t get to the port. Where they called ‘Red Sea’ you still need to spend about five days to get to the port gate. So since most of them have passed the ‘Red Sea’ and we can confirm that it seem money has exchanged hands we said they must leave, but there’s no way to turn back. So what we did on day one is to combine enforcement with passion. So we deployed our traffic management plan, which freed the road immediately, and those that were behind were able to come out. So by Monday, all the trucks on Ikorodu road, Eko bridge have disappeared, because we have moved them into the port, but the moment they heard the news that the road is free, thrice the number that was on that road before came out so that became a challenge to us, but luckily, the NPA had made Lillypond available so after the first three days, we now started directing trucks to Lillypond.
What concrete things are in place to make sure the ghost of extortion is laid to rest?
The committee has been able to remove the attraction that triggers extortion. We have removed substantially the issue that pre-empt them from rushing into the port. Since everyone now has equal access there’s no need for preferential treatment. Why are they rushing into the port? It is because of what you call demurrage. They claimed they have five to eight grace days to return a container and for every day they could not return after the grace days they pay N20,000 from the deposit they have paid and when they exhaust the deposit and they don’t pay, they go into negative and the terminal operator blacklists them. We are told 35,000 containers are in the market with over 2000 to 3000 authority to return container and the port inability to take more than 350 at Apapa Port and maybe 1000 at the Tin Can Port, it shows clearly that not all trucks would be received and if you don’t deliver by night on the day they gave you, you’ll pay another N10,000 so the truckers and the freight forwarders are in a mad rush and that was the prospect for the alleged extortion.
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