Petroleum tanker drivers have lamented their inability to access the truck transit park located at Orile Iganmu along the Badagry expressway, saying that the truck park has failed to address the challenges of traffic gridlock confronting tanker drivers in Lagos State.
One of the drivers; Alhaji Alao Lateef who spoke with Shipping Position Daily while on queue along Kirikiri Phase 1 bridge last week noted that the Orile Truck Transit Park which was established to cater for 350 petroleum tankers is grossly inadequate to accommodate over 1000 tankers that troop into Lagos State on daily basis.
“You would always see petroleum tankers on queue blocking the access road because there is no other place for us to stay, all over Lagos State alone, the state is accommodating 57 tank farms and many of the tank farm owners do not want to take responsibility of providing a parking space”
Lateef said that there has been a discontinuation of the Orile transit park arrangement which was primarily meant to decongest traffic around Apapa. He said that the project needs to be sustained and that what could be done was to sustain it and look for additional space where we could develop more parks and then we won’t have the problems we have today.
The truck driver told our correspondent that the parking space at Orile-Iganmu has been reduced drastically due to the extension of Orile-Badagry road.
“When petroleum tankers want to load product at any depot which has the capacity of loading over 100 tankers a day and there is no space to park, the drivers will be forced to park on major road”
Also speaking with our correspondent last week, a petroleum trader at Techo Oil tank farm at Kirikiri area of Apapa, Comrade Joshua Edoghan argued that the solution to traffic congestion in Apapa is not the relocation of the tank farms.
He noted that tank farms are also part of port infrastructure and that without them it would be difficult to distribute fuel. He warned that very soon there would be no way to land fuel at the tank farms as a result of the traffic problem.
“If you relocate tank farms, the problems that you associate with it in the first location would follow it wherever you relocate it to, wherever you are relocating it to, there would be trucks and lorries, the same problem that you had at your former location would now go to the next point”
“What we need is proper management of traffic, provision of roads and infrastructure, provision of parking spaces and making sure that everything is done in a safe and efficient manner” he said.
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