Months after the commencement of the federal government’s order on ease of doing business at the nation’s seaports, the National Coordinator, Save Nigeria Freight Forwarders, Importers and Exporters Coalition (SNIFIEC), Chief Sir Osita Patrick Chukwu has said that the order is not working at the ports.
Chukwu who pointed this out in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos said that the federal government started on a wrong footing by issuing the order without putting necessary infrastructure in place.
According to him”, The Presidential order is not working at the ports. Are you issuing presidential order while you have not been able to put in place some necessary things that will enable or allow the presidential order to scale through. You have not done the right thing, so if you have not done the right thing, why are you asking for the right thing to be done?
“Presidential order ought not to have come if all things are working the way they should when compared to other developed nations. See, government knows where the problem is and they failed to solve the problem”.
He pointed out even when there is a local government Chairman in Apapa, his impact cannot be felt as trailers has taken over all the roads in Apapa leaving no single road or two as being dedicated to commercial buses and private cars or the ones reserved for articulated vehicles.
“Nothing is working, which presidential order? Is it in the examination bay? Is it in the movement of trucks? Where is the road to move the trucks? Where is the road to allow the trucks that have come to drop empty containers to do so? More chaos is coming to Apapa through the issue of trucks and tankers that are littered everywhere.
“It is by the grace of God that we have not had any major disaster in Apapa port. If any disaster has happened in Apapa port, we would have been in a mess. Let us just take for instance, if fire should broke out in any part of Apapa now, the fire fighting equipment cannot be moved to that place, the medical emergency team cannot be moved to the scene. If there is an armed robbery attack, you will find it difficult for even the security agencies to get there on time to take charge of the situation”, he posited.
Chukwu maintained that reconstructing the road though would help but cannot remove gridlock entirely from Apapa since there will still be influx of trucks to the area.
He continued,” The only solution is, let them get the rail lines working fine. There is no country that has the port of this magnitude that does not have rail lines, even rail shuttles for passengers. It will reduce drastically the usage of private vehicles everywhere. Build car parks in Mile 2 and Oshodi axis where people can park their cars and use rail shuttle service to access the ports, do their businesses and use shuttles back to the car parks for their cars”.
For the Tincan Island ports that was built without a rail connection, the SNIFIEC boss suggested that rail lines could be constructed on the demarcation on the dual carriage Oshodi-Apapa expressway as was the case on Orile-Lagos Island -Badagry hanging rail being constructed by the Lagos State government adding that it will take a little time but would ease a lot of problems on the long run.
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