Human interference hampers effectiveness of E-callup system– Stakeholder

Ayobami Adedinni

A maritime stakeholder and former member of the governing council of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN), Adeyinka Bakare, has expressed fears over the threats posed by human interference to the success of the E-call up system, otherwise called ètò.

Having experimented with a manual truck scheduling arrangement for over a year, the NPA came up with an electronic truck call-up system in February, to ease the traffic gridlock responsible for the delay along the access roads leading to the country’s two busiest ports.

With the deployment of “Eto”, truck companies, terminal operators and freight agents are required to download the app, and then proceed to create an account to monitor the schedule and movement of their trucks in and out of the port.

However, in a chat with Maritime360, Bakare said although it is a good innovation, the system would have been a success if the human interface was eradicated completely.

In his words, “I had an experience where the truck had done the pregate and when it got to the gate, they said the code had been sold. So, we had to wait for them to regenerate the code.

“There is no where you want to build a new system around the old people and the system will work. It’d have been great immediately the ètò was launched, all the security architecture including Lastma, FRSC, Police among others are all changed and trained for that purpose.

“If you go on Mile 2 road, you will be surprised at the volume of extortion from the police to the Area Boys and others. At what point did we get to that level?

“A lot of people don’t go into Lillypond anymore. All they do is, once they are coming somebody takes their pass into Lillypond, do the gate thing and goes out to give the truck the tag.

“This is why when you ask around, they will say it’s not working. The platform itself works perfectly but the human interference makes it a failure,” he noted.