Fresh indications have emerged that port terminal operator; Dangote Port Operations, which is owned by Nigerian billionaire businessman, Alike Dangote, may have been frustrated to hands-off the proposed reconstruction of the access road to the Apapa port.
Dangote had in 2016 offered to reconstruct the roads leading from the Apapa port gate to the foot of the Ijora Bridge for a tax rebate.
But speaking with journalists in Lagos last week, Assistant General, Manager Corporate and Strategic Planning of Western Port of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA); Mr. Innocent Gamboro Umar said that the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing forced the terminal operator to stop the proposed construction.
He noted that the Nigerian Ports Authority does not have powers to repair expressway leading to the port and that port users should stop holding the agency responsible.
Umar noted that it would be a good thing if all the roads around the port are declared as port access roads under the NPA, so that the agency can be in charge of their repairs.
According to him, ‘’one of the biggest challenges in our country is that we have fixed legislations and laws and rules to create bodies to help Nigeria to be better governed, but those legislations and rules are the ones choking us now"
"If you go to the expressway, you cannot even pour sand in a pothole without approval, it is no more news that one of our terminal operators offered to fix this road, but the hurdles that he had to go through in government has made him lose interest", he recalled.
"NPA is in charge of the ports but she is not in charge of the roads leading to the ports, the federal government is in charge under the Federal Ministry of Works. It is not the port access roads that we have control over, it is the road nearest to the walls of the port" he said.
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