By Yemie Adeoye, Godfrey Bibvere, Kunle Kalejaye& Nnenna Ezeah
THE perennial chaotic traffic which afflicts the Coconut-Mile 2 axis of the ever-busy Apapa – Oshodi expressway has remained a constant source of nightmare and frustration to road users, stakeholders and residents of the area.

The frequent bottle-neck is a situation they have found difficult to live with, though they have no choice but to resign themselves to lamenting and counting their losses. More than 1000 man hours have been lost to the gridlock which shutdown all commercial activities in the very busy area of Lagos for over one week.

Tanker, trucks...

Between the Lagos State government, the Federal Government, members of  the Petroleum Tanker Drivers arm of NUPENG and the Depot and Petroleum Products Marketers Association, DAPPMA, as well as maritime operators in and around the Tin-Can Island Ports, it has been a ritual game of buck-passing as none of them is presently willing to take responsibility for the ugly development on the federal road.

The combination of the presence of the Tin-Can Island Port and operations of tank farms has continued to attract a huge number of oil tankers and container trucks to the area without adequate state and Federal government measures to regulate for their movement. Recently, the Lagos State government was prompted by the exigency of traffic confusion in the area to tow away more than 120 petrol tankers queuing to load products from the Ibafon oil depot, which is about the biggest in the area.

But it soon emerged that this action was far below what is really needed to restore sanity in the area, especially as the tankers have since returned to the area in full force, leaving road users, residents and port users to continue to groan under the unwarranted hardship engendered by the resulting chaotic traffic situation.

Frenzied race to empty containers

The situation is made worse by truck drivers who are always in a frenzied race to get their empty containers back to the ports and in the process, block the port access roads.

Not a few road users around the axis believed that poor regulation of traffic laws, road construction contracts, and even road usage by both the federal and state governments is responsible for the untold hardship.

A car dealer at Berger auto market in the area, which is Nigeria’s biggest auto market who simply identified himself as Jude told Vanguard that Julius Berger was performing the slowest construction work in its history, adding that this could only happen because the construction giant was simply not being properly supervised.

He lamented: “We’re not recording any sales as there is no way to access our auto park. For more than a week now no one in my park has recorded any sales. That is quite unusual and Julius Berger is to blame for the slow manner in which they’re carrying out this particular construction work.

To add to this unfortunate situation, tanker drivers and container drivers have all compounded the nightmare on our road.”

Speaking to Vanguard on the issue, the Special Adviser to the President on Maritime Matters, Leke Oyewole, described the effect of the traffic log-jam as “obviously adverse, as evacuation and return of containers going in and coming out of the Tin Can Ports has been affected by the development.”

Oyewole added that “the delay in clearing of goods from the ports caused by the long queues will affect the vessel Turn-Around-Time, TAT, which will in turn affect the cost of transaction at the port. In the long run, it is the end users of the imported goods that will bear the brunt”.

He told Vanguard that the number of man-hours lost daily on that route cannot be quantified in terms of monetary value, but informed that government has commenced a short, mid and long term measure to combat the traffic problem.

According to him, government is creating a dedicated lane for trucks going to the ports while broken down ones along the route would be removed. He said that this was in addition to putting in place a committee to control the traffic along the route.

As for the mid-term measures, Oyewole noted that discussions were ongoing with the various private terminal operators for trucks returning empty containers to the port, to move such containers to the off-dock terminal (bonded terminals outside the ports) until the shipping companies are ready to receive them before they are moved to the port.

He further informed of measures to control trailer movements to ensure that only owners of trucks who have boxes to lift would be allowed entry into the port, while government intends to build a holding bay for trailers that do not have any reason to be in the port.

For the long term plan, he explained that the congestion along the two roads leading to the ports can only be solved through the application of inter-modal means of moving the boxes and other cargoes to and from the ports. He said the reason government intends to refurbish the rail lines at the port  is to drastically reduce the congestion along the port access roads.

The Special Assistant to the President also pointed out that with the dredging of the lower Niger River, goods destined for the North are to be moved by barges from  Lagos to the Inland Terminal in Lokoja from where they would be moved to their final destinations.