By Ochereome Nnanna
WHEN construction giant Julius Berger was awarded the contract to reconstruct sections of the Apapa – Oshodi Expressway, those of us who have endured decades of suffering on this axis felt our troubles would soon be over. The area around the Berger Yard flyover has been finished, yet the hold-up on the flyover persists.

A couple of weeks ago I was trapped in one of those unexplained snarls. When I drove up to the bridge I even discovered that some Federal Road Safety officers were helping to get the traffic going. Otherwise it would have been a total standstill. The main reason for the snarl was that tankers and trailers had, as usual, been parked on and around the flyover bridge leaving only one lane for other tankers, trailers, buses and cars coming out of the heavily industrialised Kirikiri and the other side of the expressway to find their ways out.

I asked the Road Safety officers why they left the illegally parked juggernauts to block the roads. They told me that most of those offending trucks and tankers belonged to senior military officers or their friends and relations. Any attempt to implement the law by towing them could get them beaten up or even dragged to the “guard room”.

The Apapa axis of Lagos State is off-limits to the rule of law and governance as a whole. Everybody behaves just as they like here.

Apart from military officers, both high and low who throw discipline and etiquette to the wind, the trailer and tanker drivers and their unions are a law unto themselves. As a result of the fact that the Apapa zone is where trailers and tankers from all parts of the country (especially the North) come to deliver goods for export and collect imported goods and petroleum products, these large auto vessels are simply parked indiscriminately everywhere thus making business operations an unspeakable nightmare.

It seems that government is not interested in governing the Apapa area. All that government agencies operating in this flank of Lagos are interested in is the revenue they exploit out of the zone. The roads and physical infrastructures have for decades been allowed to collapse. Apapa has for long been the primary destination for loose elements from all parts of Nigeria and beyond. In fact, majority of these elements bear Sahelian features, showing that they could be from anywhere from Northern Nigeria, Niger, Chad, Mali and Burkina Faso.

Most of them have found lucrative employment in shady activities around the ports where they live in improvised shanties rather than seek decent accommodation in town like other law-abiding residents. It was not until recently when the Lagos State Government moved in to flush them out and demolish their shanties that some illegal refineries, fuel dumps, arms and ammunition and other forbidden possessions were found and destroyed.

The main problem of Apapa is that a greater part of it is the property of the Federal Government. Apapa and the ports around it are the gateways of our international trade and therefore mainly under the Federal Ministry of Transport, with law enforcement agencies such as the Army, the Nigeria Police, the Navy and the Nigerian Customs having their barracks, offices and installations there.

Lagos Island and Ikoyi were the areas where the Federal Government offices used to be. But with the relocation of the seat of government to Abuja in December 1992, Lagos Island was given up to the Lagos State Government. The Tinubu political dispensation remodelled it to the rapidly modernising business district that it has become.

The same could be done for Apapa because the Federal Government and its agencies maintained an iron grip on it, exploiting revenue without exerting the benefits of governance. When Lagos was still the seat of the Federal Government, particularly during military rule, the human flotsams that followed their “brothers” who were in the Army, Navy, Customs and other law enforcement agencies dug into the slums that developed under the bridges and odd corners. Together with the military elements they constituted the menace and nuisance that rendered Apapa off-limits to civilised conduct.

Happily, and after years of cold relationship between the Federal Government controlled by the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and the Lagos State Government ruled by the Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, a common resolve has been reached to “take Apapa back”, as the Lagos State Commissioner for the Environment, Mr Tunji Bello, put it. The Federal Government has shown its desire to commence 24-hour operations at the ports in Apapa as part of efforts to completely reform business life there. The Chairman of the Presidential Task Force to clean up Apapa, Professor Sylvester Monye, recently paid a courtesy call on Governor Raji Fashola who, incidentally, has also embarked on efforts to sweep away the illegal shanties in which dangerous elements dwelt.

For the first time since the return of democracy in 1999, the FG and the LASG, have decided to work together to reclaim Apapa, Nigeria’s foremost theatre of economic operations, the national cash cow.

However, it is not clear to us, bewildered citizens, exactly how far the two tiers of government are willing to go in the “operation retake Apapa” project. Monye vaguely said the FG intends to do in Apapa what the LASG did in Oshodi. Raji Fashola’s LASG crushed the hold of criminals on Oshodi, cleared the clutter of illegal shanties and shops, transformed open spaces and trash dumpsites into flower gardens and widened the express road to ensure orderly movement of traffic. It was a feat no previous government thought possible.

The Apapa project must go way beyond that. For the operation retake Apapa project to work, the military, security and law enforcement agents must be tamed to obey the law. They are chiefly responsible for the tragedy of Apapa. Secondly, the FG must vote large sums of money every year for the maintenance of its facilities, such as roads, bridges, premises, barracks, parks, buildings and machinery within this zone. Some have suggested the resuscitation of the Federal Ministry of Lagos Affairs, which was last headed by Alhaji Musa Yar’ Adua, the father of the late President Umaru Yar’ Adua.

The FG and LASG must sign a memo of understanding on how to work together to make Apapa the business district of our dreams and the pride of our economy, where Nigerians and foreigners alike can happily take their families for leisure and sightseeing, just as in other great port cities of the world such as Schiphol, London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong and so on.