Emmanuel Thomas
November 30, 2015 – Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria, once the preserve of the rich and mighty is gradually turning into a no go area, with most businesses, banks, other commercial concerns relocating in drove from the settlement.
The reasons are not farfetched. Prominent among the reasons many have advanced for this development is the bad state of federal roads in the area and recently lack of law and order engendered by reckless attitude of trailer and tanker drivers and inability to enforce provisions of the Lagos State Traffic Law 2012.
It is not news that most of those who live in the area no longer go out with their vehicles. Just last week, when our correspondent visited, the situation was very pathetic.
The two major federal roads leading into the area were completely blocked by tanker drivers waiting in turn to pick fuel from tank farms in the area and trailer drivers approaching the port to either to drop or pick items.
Our correspondent reported that from Ijora axis, the road was completely blocked without any passage way for motorcycles right from Ijora to Apapa. The story was not different when our correspondent maneuvered his way to Oshodi Apapa only to discover that the whole express way, all the four lanes, including service lanes were completely blocked, leaving drivers and their attenders stranded, completely motionless.
And it appears that the effect of spending days in traffic either from Ijora to Apapa or from Mile 2 to Apapa is beginning to tell on the environment, which is no longer as neat as it used to be as pockets of human faeces now dot the landscape. Observers are saying that only in a matter of time, the whole federal highway leading to Apapa will become an eyesore.
We gathered that a friend who was getting married in Apapa had to put his guests in a hotel to avert the looming threat of an empty hall that stared him in the face.
Paul, a journalist who had an assignment to cover in Apapa told our reporter that he had to alight from the commercial bus taking him to Apapa when he discovered that the whole expressway from Ijora had been blocked by trailers even without a space for the smallest motorbike to meander through.
“ I have to board okada (the local name for motorcycle) which he said had to drive against traffic after charging N500 from Ijora to get him to Apapa on time. You even beg them to take you to Apapa because that is the only way and means through which you can get there”, he said. He equally ruled out the possibility of enforcement in the present circumstance.
“Even if the Lagos State Traffic Management Authority (LASTMA) opts to arrest Okada, which road will they pass? He queried.
Ola who works in one of the oil servicing firm in Apapa told our correspondent that driving one way is now a routine in Apapa.
“Each day, the bus will only take you as far as Mile2 from where you take Okada which will drive against traffic from Mile 2 to Coconut where I will come down to cross over to my office”, he said.
Ironically, all this is taking place in a state that prohibits motorbikes like Okada which are now having a free reign in Apapa. The Lagos Traffic Law prohibits motorbikes with capacity below 200 cc on all roads and provides a fine of N50,000 or imprisonment for a term of three years or both for willful obstruction on highway, exactly what the trailers and tanker drivers have done.
“It is failure of government, you can imagine how much government could rake from this nuisance, pointing to the trailers and tankers sitting comfortable on the expressway if the laws are enforced”, Timothy, a Lagos journalists told our correspondent.
He called on the Lagos State Governor, Akinwunmi Ambode to rise up to the occasion, by limiting the trailers and tankers to just one lane so that other road users can make use of the road.
