•Truckers turn Tin Can gate to public toilet, dumpster
By Steve Agbota, [email protected]
•Dumpsite at Tin Can Port access road
Tin Can Island Port, one of the Nigeria’s premier ports and international gateways has lost its glow. It is now a shadow of itself. Heaps of refuse towering into the sky has snatched a greater portion of the road, while truckers have converted the remaining space to public toilets. Also on that corridor are petty traders.
On a final analysis, commuters, vehicle drivers and port users lament a monthly loss of over N600 billion as that corridor is almost impassable.
Port users also lamented that so many shanties and kiosks were built by non-state actors around the corridor. These illegal structures were said to be housing criminals with dangerous weapons and extortionists.
The port warehouses about five major terminals, which include Port and Cargo Handling Service, Josedam Port Services handling, Five Star Logistics, Port and Terminal Multiservices Limited, and TICT Container Limited. The Port handles diversified cargoes with each terminal operator specializing in unique forms of cargo (Dry and Wet bulk cargoes, Box- Containerized cargoes, RORO services). This makes the port one of the busiest in Nigeria and West Africa.
Despite the unique features the port possesses and being the second revenue earner after Apapa port, the road linking the two gates of the port is frighteningly dirty and dents the image of the country.
The journey to the degeneration began when truck drivers turned the road to parking lot coupled with the activities of traders, motorcyclists and miscreants.
Investigations by Daily Sun showed that the truck drivers stayed more than three weeks on the same road leading to the port. These people eat, drink, bath and excrete on this road and around the port environment.
The activities of the traders, okada riders and non-state have made the environment is an eyesore.
Daily Sun learnt that on several occasions, the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), in collaboration with the Lagos State Government, has destroyed shanties and kiosks erected by traders and non-state actors and chased them away from the Tin Can Port gates, as there are no such shanties around the neighbouring autonomous port of Benin Republic or other ports in West and Central African countries.
Surprisingly, few weeks after the NPA had demolished the shanties and kiosks, these people found their ways back to erect illegal structures and continue their business activities at the port’s front gates.
For instance, last week, the operatives of the NPA and other task force chased them away from the port gates but later in the evening of the same day, those evicted returned.
Ironically, not even the presence of the policemen at the port premises was able to deter the traders, who appear more relaxed and comfortable doing their businesses.
One of the Policemen stationed at the Tin Can gate told Daily Sun that the traders have remained recalcitrant, despite they were being chased away with the repeated seizure of their goods.
However, the men in uniform said their duty was not to drive the traders out of the port environment, but to protect the port premises from robbers and miscreants trying to cause chaos to frustrate the ease of doing business in the ports.
“That is why the management of NPA embarked on massive perimeter fencing of the Tin-Can Island Port Complex, to prevent unauthorised people from entering the main port environment’, the policeman said.
One of the truckers, Dele Ilori, who spoke to Daily Sun, said he has been on the road for more than two weeks to return empty containers to the port. He said extortion and other man-made factors in the port were causing the traffic along the corridor.
However, port users who spoke to Daily Sun said the activities of truck drivers and other unauthorised traders along the port corridor are twin problems that need to be tackled headlong by both the Federal and State governments. They lamented that economy lose over N600 billion monthly, calling on the authorities to find lasting solutions to the challenges impeding trade facilitation along the port corridor.
They said that the prolonged gridlock that makes trucks to stay more than three weeks on the road was hurting the economy and the nation as a whole.
Stakeholders said that for years, criminal elements hiding at the illegal Kiosks, container shops and abandoned trailers in the cover of doing business at the shanties along the Oshodi –Apapa Expressway to the Lagos ports of Apapa, Tincan Island and others have turned to extortionists of inbound and outbound and trucks and other motorists.
They appealed to the government to ensure that the dirt and refuse along the road leading to the port’s two gates are cleared before the rainy starts because during the rainy season, passersby and port users found it difficult to use the road as it always sticky.
A chieftain of the Tin Can Chapter of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Michael Ovien, said the port express road, which is called Apapa-Oshodi expressway, is a federal road.
“Now if you look at it, the road is located right in front of Tin Can first gate. Tin Can first gate down to Ibafo, I believe is controlled by Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Federal Ministry of Works. If you still look at it from there down to Tin Can second gate before Liverpool, it controlled by NPA and Federal Ministry of Works”, he explained.
He said truck drivers are using the road, which is under the National Union of Roads Transport Workers and COMTUA.
He said the truckers park on the road, sleep and take their bath under the pretense that they want to drop empty containers or maybe some tankers among them that are going to MRS station. He added that all these drivers eat and drink everyday, if they want to excrete both faeces and urinating, they defecate on the road.
“The Nigerian licensed Customs agents are not on the roads. We have the government, which are Federal Ministry of Works and NPA, the Police, the Council of Maritime Truck Unions and Associations (COMTUA) as an association. These people supposed to be taking care of that road or the Government should take the total control if that axis.
“The only way sanity can come to this area including people selling along the axis is to drive them away and maintain total enforcement. Because what is ahpeening now is that after they were driven away from the place, they called Abuja. The government in question is the one responsible for the clean up of that place because if the government was doing their job, that place will not be in that state, which is economically hazardous to the whole nation.
“It is only when the President is coming that they try to tide up that road and immediately the President leaves, everything that is happening in that place will come back, which means part of the people in government are making something in that area.
“My candid advice is for government to look into that place and takeover environmental sanitation of the place, otherwise, we continue to be a public hazard for this country and the economy. If you look at that place again, it has constituted nuisance, there is robbery within that area. If you come in the night, if you are not careful, they might snatch your bag.
“That place should be opened for good business. They should go back to 2010 when that road was motorable but now occupied by truck owners, the truck drivers, the LASTMA and other people that come there to do their dirty act,” he added.
Meanwhile, National Coordinator, Save Nigeria Freight Forwarders Importers Exporters Coalition, Osita Chukwu, said to clear that road will take a lot, saying that the owners of trucks and tankers will make it impossible to clear the road because they are the people at echelon of government.
“A minister tried to clear the road, they removed him as the Minister of Works and put him another ministry. The other man, Raji Fashola tried it, it didn’t work. The difference between Fashola’s own made it possible that a single lane was created out in and out both left and right.
“You can see now these trailers and tankers have become a hydra-headed that cannot be able to touch any longer because people that keeping them there are the owners and the lawmakers that is not possible to clear the road,” he said.
He lamented that the current state of the Tin Can Port gates is not good for the image of the country, saying such situation can never happen in the neigbouring port of Benin Republic, Togo and Ghana.
He said the situation gives continuous retardation in economic building and continues piling up issues in economic logistics chain.
“We cannot shy away from that and we should know time is money. Time being wasted will affect the logistics in one way and the other. It is not good for the image of our nation at all. We are losing more N600 billion to manpower. The manpower and other resources, we are losing everyday.
“Just imagine the trailer parking there for one month. Some of them are there for three weeks. So how could that work? These trailers are meant to be doing work on a daily basis. “And we called ourselves a nation but we don’t know what to do. Trailers are supposed to be making money for the owners and the nation or whatever. They will just line up because of the attitude of some powerful people in the industry. It is a long way that is not turning,” he added.
He said the only advise is that they should allow the Navy take the mantle and continue to work as the port access road is being neglected, saying if Navy wants to clear the road under one day, they have the capacity to do it.
“But when the Navy clears the road, you will see somebody at the top saying why don’t you allow my truck to enter the port? That means it the trucks they built the road for to park. The road is being built for them to come and park. My brother, it is very obvious that we are not serious as a nation that wants to use shipping development to create wealth for ourselves,” he said.