Long queues of trucks waiting for non-available petroleum products have once again taken over the service lane along the Apapa end of the high density Apapa Oshodi expressway; even as personnel of the Nigeria Navy have been pulled out of the area.
There were speculations last week that the indiscriminate parking of trucks and other undisclosed reasons may have informed the decision of naval hierarchy to pull out their men. Officers of the Nigerian navy were brought in about two years ago to control the flow of traffic around the Ibru jetty which plays host to at least 20 tank farms.
The Navy had drafted its personnel to the roads around the tank farms, but now that they have pulled out, fear of imminence of traffic congestion and return of anarchy as social ,miscreants are reportedly taken charge is palpable.
Apparently worried about this, the technical and stakeholder committee of the depots located within the Ibru yard last week held a stakeholders’ meeting to look into the state of the road as well as proffer solutions to the causes of congestion along the Ibafon axis.
In an official paper which was sighted by our correspondent, the committee gave the major cause of the traffic congestion on the service lane as the scarcity of the petrol that is being experienced in the country.
According to the committee, the petrol tankers are disturbing private vehicles, customers and even those that are coming to load other products like AGO and DPK and that it is because majority of these PMS trucks are from different parts of the country.
Confirming the development to Shipping Position Weekly, the chairman of the technical committee Mr. Godfrrey Okorie said that the committee will take immediate steps to make sure that the congestion is curtailed and traffic returns to normal. Okorie also explained that “we have found out that there is a problem of congestion in and around the Ibru complex and in order not to experience the kind of situation that was obtainable before, all the stakeholders have sat down together to identify the cause and find solutions”.
He however said that the committee is ready to harmonize its decisions with members of the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) unit of NUPENG in order to find a way out of the present clog.
Okorie said that apart from the scarcity being the a major cause of congestion, the committee is also going to streamline the activities of the different hawkers littering the complex as well as the black marketers of petroleum products that are seen with kegs and hose pipes along the access roads, he said immediate action will be taken to take them off the road.
“We are having this situation because Lagos is the main centre of petroleum importation in the country and the bulk of these importation come into the depots located within the Ibru complex, the major suppliers are here, so also, the NNPC is using tank farms here to distribute the product and that is why we see that the volume of tankers coming here is always much”, he stressed.
Our correspondent however confirmed that efforts are already being intensified to get naval authorities to rescind their decision.
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