The pains, damages and loses suffered by port users because of the deplorable state of the port access roads rises by the day while government continues to collect levies daily in billions  of naira from hapless citizens, who, in the struggle to survive, have no choice but to face the harrowing ordeal of plying Apapa roads in search of daily bread.

While the lamentations reecho across the land, with cargo diversion to neighbouring countries being one of the consequences of embarrassing leadership failure at planning and or responding to developments, stakeholders at the just concluded All Nigerian Maritime Journalist Retreat, convened by the Association of Maritime Journalist of Nigeria, AMJON, have come up with solutions which, if implemented could permanently resolve the Apapa gridlock menace.

Delivering a paper titled “Sea Port Development and the Apapa Gridlock: Issues and Prospect”, Rear Admiral Godwill Siepre Ombo (rtd) said a port becomes a wheel (gateway to a nation’s economy) if it runs efficiently.

According to Ombo “A port is a critical aspect of a nation’s transportation system and the nerve centre of its maritime sector. It is expedient to know that it thrives in a properly balanced logistics and transport equation and management.   From the colonial times till the late 1970’s, as iterated by Olusola Akosile of Nigerian Ports Today and from personal experience, transportation in Nigeria was marked by a high degree of intermodality where over 80% of the nation’s import and export were hauled to and from the hinterlands and the sea ports in Lagos and Port Harcourt by rail, including passenger traffic across the nation.  As we allowed the railway system to dilapidate in favour of road transport, the road has taken a monumental whipping and landed us in this malaise of a grid lock, particularly in the Apapa – Lagos area, which is defying all attempted palliatives and creating a situation wherein disembarkation of goods at these ports are tending to outweigh their evacuation out of the ports.  This situation calls for a deep and sober reflection and prompt sustainable workable solutions which are readily available”.

Admiral Ombo defined Logistics as the timely and effective movement of people and assets from one place to another in order to provide needed services to achieve set objectives.

He lamented that by allowing the ports to become tank farms and storage centres and the port access roads and bridges, parking lots for our numerous tankers and trailers without an effective intermodal transport chain, the present gridlock, he said is a time bomb/disaster waiting to happen particularly with the threats of global terrorism and its asymmetric warfare tactics.

The way out of the perennial Apapa gridlock in Ombo’s view is to re-construct and re-connect Tin Can Port to the Apapa port rail network.

In his words “Unfortunately, both ports have a common access road which from lack of intermodal logistics and transport capacities, bad governance and poor foresight have resulted to a perennial gridlock that has defied all government palliative efforts till date.   However, borrowing a leaf from at least the UK’s Freight & Rail experiences and reconfiguring particularly the Tin Can Island port with rail lines that will link it to the Apapa rails network for the evacuation of goods, and ensuring that the tank farms are networked by pipelines to loading points outside of Lagos, through a Public Private Partnership arrangement, remains the only way to end this painful malaise that has made business in both ports and the Apapa metropolis unbearable.

Stakeholders unanimously adopted the views canvassed by Rear Admiral Godwill Siepre Ombo (rtd) at the 2016 All Nigerian Maritime Journalist Retreat, convened by the Association of Maritime Journalist of Nigeria, AMJON.

Participants remain uncertain whether government will act on this or any other of the numerous solutions proffered by stakeholders on the Apapa gridlock.