Our collaboration with truckers is to stop extortion on port access road—- NAGAFF compliance team

Segun Oladipupo

The National Coordinator of the NAGAFF 100% Compliance Team, Alhaji Ibrahim Tanko has stated that the urge to end extortion of truck drivers by presidential task force and other security agencies informed his alliance with truck owners’ associations.

He added that the alliance will help to put an end to the perennial gridlock on the port access roads in Lagos.

Tanko said this while speaking with newsmen in his office in Lagos, recently even as he described that alliance as a good one.

The NAGAFF 100 percent Coordinator expressed sadness over the increased cost of hauling goods out of the ports to any part of Lagos state and beyond.

He said, “We pay huge amount of money ranging from N150,000 to N300,000 for an empty truck to come in to carry containers and that is why you are seeing the increase in transport fare.”

“Now, haulage fee in Tincan is N1.3 million, it was N1 million as at last week. If you want to carry container from Tincan to any part of Lagos, it is N1.3 million. This is because in Tincan, the extortionists no longer collect N250,000 or N300, 000 as bribe, they are now collecting between N400,000 and N500,000.

“So, we want to end this problem. The Presidential Task Team have failed woefully, so, we now decided that since the freight forwarders own the boxes and maritime truck owners own the trucks, let us come together to solve our problem because it is nobody’s problem. So, that is why we are teaming up to see whether we can take charge of the access control to the port”, he added.

While stating that there had been meetings, he added that they had written series of letters to the Office of the Vice President of Nigeria, Office of the Governor of Lagos State, the Inspector General of Police, the Commissioner of Police Lagos State, the Managing Director, Nigerian Ports Authority amongst others in this regard.

“We have had a meeting with the Lagos State Governor and he accepted to work with us along with LASTMA. We did some demonstrations on how we intend to go on the project before the Governor last Friday; we demonstrated how the access card will work. We are still working on it.

“We will be meeting with the NPA. NPA was trying to hijack it but we resisted it on the ground that we have finished with the Nigerian Navy, we are experimenting with the presidential task team and now NPA. We are going to take it upon us, if they want, they can join us,” he concluded.