No fewer than one million persons and 100,000 companies are to be affected by the reconstruction of Apapa-Wharf Road which is to commence on July 7, the consultant to AG Dangote has said.
The two kilometers road is to be reconstructed by Dangote Group, Flour Mills of Nigeria and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) at N4.3 billion within 12 months.
An ex-commissioner of Transportation in Lagos State and consultant to AG Dangote, Kayode Opeifa, said this at a meeting between officials of Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing, AG Dangote, Nigerian Ports Authority and other stakeholders on the reconstruction of Apapa- Wharf Road in Lagos.
Opeifa called on stakeholders to ensure that all hands must be on deck to ease traffic the burden for the residents and business owners in the axis during the reconstruction work.
He appealed to stakeholders in the industry to co-operate with the contractors for smooth operations within the 12 months deadline the contractors have to complete the road reconstruction.
He also called on the truck operators to take their trucks off the road to facilitate easy movement of vehicles to and from the port even as he said traffic management agencies would come out with a traffic diversion manifest on Monday.
Meanwhile, truck owners have blamed Lagos state government for being partially responsible for the presence of trucks on the roads due to some of the policies of the government at the time Opeifa was in the Lagos state cabinet.
They also alleged security agents assigned with the responsibility of managing the traffic congestion on the road of extorting money from truck drivers and allowing them to park their trucks along the access roads.
The chairman, Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO), Chief Remi Ogungbemi, said that the immediate relief sought by the government would not have arisen if the state had not dislodged the truck park the truckers were using before now.
The AMATO chairman stated that in 2104, truckers paid millions of naira to the Lagos State government to acquire the Ijora Lilypond terminal as parking bay but was frustrated by the state government when Opeifa was the Special Assistant to the Lagos state government on transportation.
Ogungbemi was responding to the earlier submission of Opeifa, a former commissioner of Transport in Lagos state who accused truckers of not having a place to park their trucks hence parking along the port access roads when they don’t have business being there.
Opeifa maintained that the roads could be made to be free of traffic while the construction work lasted, called on truck owners to cooperate with the engineers during the period of the construction to ease traffic.