Truck Owners to Assist NPA with Crane, Towing Vehicles to Ease Apapa Traffic

By ZION Olalekan |

Container truck owners under the aegis of Amalgamation of Container Truck Owners Association of Nigeria (ACTOAN) have expressed readiness to assist the government by acquiring their own crane and towing vehicles, in order to rescue fallen containers on the port access roads.

Speaking exclusively with nigeriamaritime360.com, chairman of the association, Leye Thompson condemned the leadership of National Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO) as well as other truckers’ associations, accusing them of greed, extortion and being self-centred.

He alleged that leadership of the various associations do not own trucks, and that they only extort money, specifically N4, 000 from every truck entering the port.

Thompson said that his members are the real owners of largest number of trucks that operate at the port, adding that the idea behind the crane and towing vehicle was to assist its members rescue their trucks whenever they are fallen due to bad roads.

Thompson identified bad roads, lack of truck holding bays and frequent break down of vehicles as major challenges on port access roads. He stressed the need for trucks entering into the port to be standardised.

He explained that ACTOAN is not about making money, but that it was established to solve challenges of truckers and form a synergy among the various truckers. He also confirmed that the group wants to form a good working relationship with government to achieve some of the laudable programmes it is having at hand.

Thompson said, “A very good leader should think of how to raise some little things to support government like getting a towing vehicle and having our own crane, the nature of business we are doing is a risk business and nobody can predict what would happen tomorrow, so you need to have foresight and think of solution ahead even before the problems come.

“We are already thinking about it that if we have our own solid arrangement, we should have our own crane and our own towing vehicles, these are the little things that can help us. As it is now, any break down of any truck on Apapa road without intervention of the Lagos State Government can cause traffic that could remain there for three days, but if such happens and the association has its towing vehicle and cranes, in a couple of hours there would be free flow of traffic, it needs corporation and attention of everybody”.

He added that there is need for truckers associations to speak with one voice, saying this will ameliorate the challenges in Apapa.

He said the amalgamation was formed because of failure of the existing truck owners associations.

“We have attended all sorts of meetings with NARTO, RTEAN and so on but there is no headway, this was why we decided to have this single amalgamation in order to speak with one voice.

“ACTOAN, Corporate Fleet Owners are the real owners of vehicles, myself, I have about 50 trailers, so also do my members, but the leadership of NARTO does not even have a single truck, they are just collecting money from people, if you go to Tin Can Island Port 2nd gate, they are collecting N4, 000 from truckers but you can never see us collecting such from our members.

“The only thing we do is ask our members to get our stickers, place it by your truck and in case of any challenges, call the association. The others are not organised, all they want is to collect money”, he said.