Towards the closing years of the 16th Century, the Spanish Armada, a Spanish fleet of 130 warships, sailed from La Coruna escorting an army from Flanders, to invade England and overthrow Queen Elizabeth I. Then, in the 1970s, Nigeria experienced the “Cement Armada,” a deluge of cement that overwhelmed the Lagos Ports. It took the stern resolve of Brig Benjamin “Black Scorpion” Adekunle to end the “benign invasion.”
Today, close to the 2020s of the 21st Century, there is a massive lockdown of Lagos roads by articulated vehicles seeking to approach either the Tin Can Island Ports, or the petroleum products’ tank farms along the approach to the port. It is also a common sight to see trailers parked between Loco Bus Stop and Adekunle Bus Stop on the Murtala Muhammed Way that stretches from Yaba Flyover to Oyingbo.
A friend, who is not an engineer by the way, who is obviously thinking about what engineers refer to as strength of material, explains that those Lagos bridges and flyovers could collapse under the weight of the stationary articulated vehicles.
If you go on to Ikorodu Road, Western Avenue, the bridge linking both roads, Eko Bridge, Ijora Bridge, and descend onto Wharf Road in Apapa, you will see long queues of these haulage trucks and tankers. The same obtains from the Sanya-Amuwo Odofin-Mile 2-Berger neck of the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway approach to Tin Can Island Port.
To get to Apapa from Oshodi, you will get down from your car, and hop on a bike. You could also drive unto the Okota-Itire Link Bridge at Cele Bus Stop with impunity, and re-join the expressway by the Itire Police Station.
Instead of turning right towards Oshodi, you turn left, by-passing the service lane, and go onto the expressway, to face traffic coming from Apapa, sometimes at very high speed. Here, the police do not seem to bother to enforce traffic rules.
Indeed, the policemen abet the flouting of the rules-without extorting bribes! Also, you will not find a traffic warden, an officer of the Federal Road Safety Corps or of the Lagos State Transport Management Authority on duty here. They’ve abandoned the place.
One day, it took a friend and this writer about four and half hours to drive from Maza Maza to the Mile 2 Bridge ramp, a distance of less than five miles. At the end, both were exhausted, sweating like greased monkeys in an air-conditioned car!
This whole unfortunate development is causing a nuisance to Lagos State citizens, and strangulating the economy of the nation. It gets more compounded with the, albeit legitimate and necessary, physical construction – of roads, bus stops, and flyovers – that has turned the Lagos metropolis into a construction site.
The concentration of immobile vehicles on the roads for a prolonged period is leading to environmental degradation, and damage to the roads, as engine oil, diesel, and petrol are drained right onto the highways.
A substantial part of the road has collapsed, and the highway has been turned into a transit camp and haven for hoodlums who rob hapless motorists with hammers, knives, and guns. This happens more on Western Avenue, now known as Funsho Williams Avenue, and around Mile 2 Bridge.
The tankers want to load fuel from the tank farms, while the trucks want to return empty containers, and receive new consignments of goods from the ports. The Permanent Secretary, Lagos State Ministry of Transportation, Taiwo Olufemi, laments that Lagos Port, built to carry 30 million metric tonnes of cargo, now caters to 80 million metric tonnes.
You can only imagine the relief that greeted the recent announcement that the Lagos State Government would acquire ABAT Truck Terminal somewhere in the Ijora-Iganmu area to park about 3,000 articulated vehicles.
Reports indicate that vehicles on Western Avenue will be the first to be moved after the completion of repair work on the acquired trailer park. But subtle hints that the traffic gridlock may not abate until towards the end of 2018 are not acceptable.
And apart from the new trailer park being inadequate, there are concerns that trailer drivers may refuse to use it. In September 2017, the Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation, Lanre Elegushi, gave marching orders for the trucks to vacate the roads.
They ignored him, probably because of the apologetic manner in which he went about it. He had said that the Lagos State Government understood the economic importance of articulated vehicles, implying that the government did not mean to inconvenience the drivers. He forgot that “owo kii f’owo l’orun,” one business cannot stifle another.
Also, in March 2018, the Lagos State Government, and the military, issued a 48-hour ultimatum for the vehicles to be moved away. They seemingly complied after a meeting with the government, tank farm owners, and the drivers’ cadre of the National Union of Petroleum Employees of Nigeria. But they came back with greater impunity.
After the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry drew attention to the matter, Vice President Yemi Osinbajo gave an assurance that the Federal Government was collaborating with the private sector to resolve the crippling traffic on all roads approaching Apapa, the site of Nigeria’s major seaports.
The Minister of Power, Works, and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, announced an understanding that the Dangote Group would fix the completely collapsed Wharf Road approach to the ports in Apapa. Talks that linked Flour Mills of Nigeria – that sprawls along Wharf Road – to the rehabilitation of the road, as a tax-deductible project, have somehow fizzled out.
The LCCI President, Babatunde Ruwase, had observed: “The bridges we have in Lagos have been turned (in)to trailer parks, which is not good for business.” He suggested that the rail lines leading out of Apapa should be resuscitated, to make it easier for goods to move from the ports to other parts of Nigeria.
An unfortunate and ethnic dimension that has been introduced into the equation is that most of the haulage trucks and petrol tankers are owned and driven, by Northern Nigerians who want to ground the economy of the South-West, perhaps, in continuation of an unfinished agenda by Gen. Sani Abacha.
This is dangerous, and far-fetched, but also plausible, if you consider the menace caused to fellow compatriots in Benue, Taraba, Plateau, Kogi, Enugu, and Delta states, just to mention a few, by rampaging herdsmen. The way to perish this sinister thought is for President Muhammadu Buhari to act swiftly to address the concern.
You see, it is important to acknowledge that the matter is beyond the political will of the Lagos State Government. The best that the Lagos State Government can do is to dedicate land to trailer parks, and tear down houses to construct new roads. Merely fixing existing roads won’t cut the ice.
It will take the federal might to come up with economic policies that will revitalise local industries, and reduce dependence on importation of consumer goods. Also, the Federal Government must find a way to run the local refineries optimally, and create an enabling environment for local investors to establish modular refineries.
This should reduce the importation of consumer goods, and eliminate importation of petroleum products. Tank farms would then be relocated away from the ports, and taken further inland. The Federal Government must urgently lay rail lines to evacuate goods from the ports.
President Buhari, kaji ko?
Twitter @lekansote1
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