The executive order on the Apapa Road may not be enough to address the traffic problem in that axis without the appropriate measures being put in place.
This was the view of the Lagos State governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, who was on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily on Wednesday, December 11, 2019.
He explained that the state government has been making efforts to provide infrastructure for the trailers on the road, giving assurance that it would go a long way in taking the challenge.
“First, we are also trying to see how to provide infrastructure for these trailers because if you don’t provide alternatives, they will keep coming back,” the governor stated.
He added, “We have identified a trailer park that is going to take 6,000 (trucks), investments have been put together and the construction will start in earnest.”
Sanwo-Olu noted that the Federal Government had set up an enforcement team to manage the situation.
In a bid to ensure that the action was consistent, he said the state government constituted another team to fully complement the Federal Government’s effort.
The governor, however, highlighted the major factors that contributed to the traffic congestion in Apapa, one of which he said was the operations inside the ports themselves.
According to him, the turnaround inside the ports brings a lot of clog out on the road while truck drivers are struggling to get back to the port with empty containers for demurrage.
Sanwo-Olu also decried the attacks on personnel of the Lagos State Traffic Management, LASTMA, and other government officials in the area.
Despite this, he stressed that the government would continue to live up to its responsibility and called for a review of the operations around the ports for better traffic management.
He said they were working with the Nigerian Ports Authority, NPA, and the Nigerian Shippers’ Council for a long-lasting solution.
The governor who did not give a timeframe for how long the problem would persist proposed the construction of more ports in the state.
He said, “The current capacity of the two ports we have has been well outstripped. The current capacity is way beyond what they are currently doing.
“The long term solution is to decongest the port and have other ports in Lagos being built. So we’ve started construction of the Lekki Deep Port, it’s to also quickly finalise conversation on the Badagry Port.”
