A maritime expert, Rear Admiral Godswill Siepre Ombo (rtd.) at the just concluded All Nigerian Maritime Journalists’ Retreat, convened by the Association of Maritime Journalists’ of Nigeria, (AMJON) proffered solutions which if implemented could permanently resolve the Apapa gridlock menace.
The stakeholders at the event earlier recalled that the pains, damages and loses suffered by port uusers as a result of the deplorable state of the port access roads rises by the day while government continues to collect levies daily in billions of naira from hapless citizens, who, in the struggle to survive, have no choice but to face the harrowing ordeal of plying Apapa roads in search of daily bread.
Lamentation resonates daily across the land, with cargo diversion to neighbouring countries being one of the consequences of embarrassing leadership failure at planning and/or responding to developments.
Speaking in a paper titled, “Sea Port Development and the Apapa Gridlock: Issues and Prospect”, Rear Admiral Godwill Siepre Ombo (rtd.) said a port becomes a wheel (gateway to a nation’s economy) if it runs efficiently.
“A port is a critical aspect of a nation’s transportation system and the nerve centre of its maritime sector. It is expedient to know that it thrives in a properly balanced logistics and transport equation and management.
“From the colonial times till the late 1970’s, as reiterated by Olusola Akosile of Nigerian Ports Today and from personal experience, transportation in Nigeria was marked by a high degree of intermodality where over 80% of the nation’s import and export were hauled to and from the hinterlands and the sea ports in Lagos and Port Harcourt by rail, including passenger traffic across the nation.
“As we allowed the railway system to dilapidate in favour of road transport, the road has taken a monumental whipping and landed us in this malaise of a gridlock, particularly in the Apapa – Lagos area, which is defying all attempted palliatives and creating a situation wherein disembarkation of goods at these ports are tending to outweigh their evacuation out of the ports.
“This situation calls for a deep and sober reflection and prompt sustainable workable solutions which are readily available”, Ombo said.
He defined Logistics as the timely and effective movement of people and assets from one place to another in order to provide needed services to achieve set objectives.
He regretted that by allowing the ports to become tank farms and storage centres and the port access roads and bridges, parking lots for our numerous tankers and trailers without an effective intermodal transport chain, the present gridlock, was a time bomb waiting to happen particularly with the threats of global terrorism and its asymmetric warfare tactics.
Ombo submitted that the way out of the perennial Apapa gridlock was to re-construct and re-connect Tin Can Port to the Apapa port rail network.
According to him, ”Unfortunately both ports have a common access road which for lack of intermodal logistics transport capacities, bad governance and poor foresight have resulted to a perennial gridlock that have defied government palliative efforts till date.
“However, borrowing a leaf from at least the UK’s freight and rail experiences and reconfiguring particularly the Tincan Island port with rail lines that will link it to Apapa rails network for the evacuation of goods, and ensuring that the tank farms are networked by pipelines to loading points outside of Lagos through a public private partnership arrangement, remains the only way to end this painful malaise that has made business in both ports and the Apapa metropolis unbearable. “
Stakeholders unanimously adopted the views canvassed by Rear Admiral Godwill Siepre Ombo (rtd.) at tthe event even as it remained uncertain whether or not government would act on this or on any of the numerous solutions so far proffered by stakeholders on Apapa gridlock earlier before now.
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