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Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has decried multiple security checkpoints along the Lagos -Badagry Expressway.
Chairman, ANLCA Seme Chapter Onyekachi Ojinma, who raised the alarm, said most of the checkpoints, which he described as illegal, frustrate trade and free flow of traffic, especially at the Gbaji and Iyafin stretch of the ECOWAS road.
He described the Lagos-Badagry expressway as ‘an eyesore with more than 50 security checkpoints, approved and unapproved, from the border to Okokomaiko’.
He said: “Between Gbaji and Iyafin, which is less than 100 metres, you can count more than 40 police checkpoints; and, at each point, a truck load of import and export goods is forced to pay N2,000. You can imagine how much you will spend delivering a truckload of goods processed and duly released by Customs to Mile 2. Even travellers are not allowed to move freely.”
He called on the Inspector General of Police to help restore sanity to the road.
“What is more worrisome is that at the checkpoints, you are confronted with an intimidating presence of fierce-looking young men who block the road with tyre rippers, brandishing sticks and other weapons.
“But what I don’t know is whether policemen have a right, under the law, to procure the services of touts and whether or not the police, as an institution, can be vicariously held liable for crimes of these touts.”
Board of Trustees (BoT) Secretary, Association of Registered Freight Forwarders, Nigeria (AREFFN), Innocent Elum, also decried the development, wondering why the checkpoints are even more in number now that the border is no longer closed.
