Apapa Traffic: haulage cost drops as importation into Lagos Ports shrinks

Abiola Seun

The cost of moving cargoes from Lagos ports have dropped significantly as importation of cargoes into Apapa and Tin-Can Island ports has slowed down drastically, investigation has shown.

Before now, cost has gone up due to the traffic gridlock on the port access road and increase in extortion by security agents controlling traffic.

For two weeks now, cost of moving cargoes out of the Apapa and Tin-Can Island ports have gone down drastically.

According to a truck owner, Yusuf Liadi, cost of moving a 40ft container from Apapa port to Sango, a suburb in Ogun State has gone down from N390,000 to N300,000.

In a chat, he stated further that Ikeja, has also dropped from N300,000 to N230,000 while Apapa port to Iyana Isolo has reduced to N250,000, among others.

Liadi attributed the sharp reduction in the prices to reduction in importation in the last few months.

He said, “importation is low and that has led to reduction in price of haulage because there are not many boxes to evacuate out of the seaport.”

Liadi also stated that importation is expected to pick up before the start of the fourth quarter.

His words, “We are experiencing free movement in and out of the port due to less importation into the port but we expect activities to pick up because it has affected cost of hauling cagoes out of the Apapa seaport.”

Also speaking, the former Vice chairman, National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Abdulhai Inua Mohammed, also attributed the reduction of gridlock on Apapa port access roads to declining importation.

Mohammed, said the reduction of gridlock is not on all the port access roads, as the TinCan Island axis remains a nightmare to commuters.

“We can say that the gridlock has reduced but the true situation is that importation has reduced drastically, and yes traffic has reduced in some areas but in other areas, it is still a nightmare.

“I will like the authorities to go towards the Tincan axis, from mile 2 to Tincan to see what is happening in that axis.

“Some of the truck owners have packed their trucks because of some of the irregularities that take place in some areas,” he said.

Mohammed advised the regulatory bodies to call stakeholders together and get their inputs on the wrong-doings within that area to be able to tackle the problem.

He said so many people have garages even before the introduction of the e-call-up, asking what prevented the authorities from integrating those garages to the call-up system.

He said most of the trucks parked on the roads and bridges were due to the inefficiency of the regulatory bodies.

“I can’t have my own garage and allow it to be on the road because being on the road is not safe in the sense that hoodlums do disturb the drivers and prevent them from resting.

“But if the truck is in my garage, I can go to my family and have some rest,” he said.

He pointed out that most of the truck drivers were illiterates, and that any person that offered them the call-up, the drivers would quickly take it so that they would have access to the port.

“It does not make sense when your garage is about 5km to access the port and someone is asking you to go to the one that is 10km away from the port,” he said.