True Story Behind Apapa Gridlock

Many things might have been said about the problems surrounding the Apapa Gridlock that today turned Lagos and its environs to something else, while the government believes that it is coming from the lacks of coordinated transportation system more specifically from the conveyers of imported Products that is the big Trucks operators, most of others sees the problems purely from the decades of Government negligence and lack of stringent measures to tackle official highhandedness and alleged corrupt practices.

To many other operators the gridlock is rather coming from the long years of Leaderships failure and the refusal to critically look at the decaying Port Authority and the Roads linking to the port authority, while other Ports in the Country more specifically those in Calabar, Rivers, Warri and other places have been completely forgotten.

And many Shipments coming to Nigeria that supposed to have Landing Bays and Inland Containers in all places and the Port Authorities were not developed, while Ships that upload Containers and Oil Trucks have owners who are above the Law and are untouchables doing as they wish to the Nation.

Operators more specifically who are today operating at lost, believes that the big times Ships operators have tremendously contributed in today’s problems of the grid lock and are doing businesses as if the Country belongs to them while in real time they supposed to have their private Landing Bays outside Apapa and Tin can port but they are allowed to continue to checkups the place at no cost.

Another problems arising from the operators of the Shipping lines, is the fact that most of them do comes into the Country with over 1000 Containers and after uploading them at the Port they left them behind to create conjunction at the place while what they supposed to be doing was carrying them back to where they come from with another loads.

The true situations has been investigated  since when the Nigeria Ports were build decades ago there was no much infrastructural turn around Maintenance was carried out there which resulted to the today’s unfortunate devastating situation the Nation gate way found itself.

Expert like Sir Dr John Ofobiked, believes however that not until government took the huge responsibilities of directing Shipping Lines to have their own Landing Bays outside Apapa and Tin Can Port as well as enforcing that any Ship owner that comes in with thousands of Containers should after offloading return with some exported items back to where they comes from with those Containers or Return them as empty as they are, which in essence would allowed a De congested Port, the Country will continue to wallow in this debilitating menace.

Another, issues of concern as raise by stakeholders in the Shipping industry is the allegations of maltreatment through extortion allegedly by the Multi National Shipping Line owners of collecting between 25,000 Naira per Container whenever it is been offloaded for staying 24 hours at the Port and on the Terminal will also pay N14,000 on daily basis including Sunday and Saturday.

All these are coming when the APMT  refused to live up to their expectations of been true managers of the Port Authority while Quacks and other unpatriotic Security operatives are left extorting monies on daily basis, and on the other hands Federal government deliberately refused to Repair the roads linking the Port and the outside World.

In all of these the Common Man who awaits Shipments of Goods for his survival remains at the receiving end with the operators taken over the responsibilities of the government while the government remains aloof, Security Operators who are supposed to be guiding activities at the gate way allegedly connived against the Nation

Gambo Tudunwada Writes From Kano