Wharf Road Construction is 90% Completed—NPA

By ZION Olalekan |

The Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) Hadiza Bala Usman has assured that the construction of the Apapa wharf road is ninety percent completed and that it would be opened up to port users in the next one month.

Hadiza stated this in Lagos yesterday at the Prince Olayiwola Shittu Colloquium at 68 and Book Presentation.

Hadiza said “Wharf Road is at 90% completion and it would be handed over within the next one month and Nigerian Ports Authority contributed N1.3billion to the construction of the wharf road, this is outside our regulatory requirements”.

Meanwhile, port operators are now breathing a sigh of relief over the palliative work that was recently applied on the Mile 2 to Tin Can Island Port by construction company, AG Dangote.

Our correspondent gathered that vehicles can now drive freely on the Oshodi-Apapa expressway from Mile 2 bus stop through Coconut bus stop down to Tin Can Island second gate.

One of the port stakeholders, Mr Dom Onyeka told our correspondent that for the very first time in several years, he was able to drive his vehicle from Mile 2 to Apapa wharf.

Also speaking, Chairman of Association of Nigeria Licensed Custom Agents (ANLCA) at Tin Can Island Port, Prince Segun Oduntan confirmed that there has been an improvement on the access road inwards and outward Apapa since Dangote took over.

He however called on the contractor to speed up work on the major construction of the access road in view of the yuletide and festivities coming up in December.

He warned that at that time, importation would be at its peak and bad access would result to port congestion.

Speaking, he said “There have been some improvements so far, we just hope that it keeps on like that, we cannot wait to have our port access to be 100 percent free, with palliative, we hope that things would continue to be better so that in the yuletide that is coming, we would be able to have a hitch free operations because the congestion at that time would be so terrible”.

Already, Oduntan said that due to the bad access roads, clearing agents have designed a means of ameliorating the situation by discharging vehicles out containers somewhere within the Tin Can port perimeters.

The chairman said that in order to avoid cost of hiring trucks and transportation, vehicles are emptied within the premises of Con oil filling station at Tin Can second gate.

He said the facility is not a bonded terminal, “But because of the traffic situation around, instead of taking your container to Ikeja, Ikorodu or wherever, it is easier here, this approach came up due to the problem of the congestion, it is another way of us saying instead of us putting all the trailers on the road, let us empty the containers here and return them.

“Most trailers that do the within job are trailers that are almost off the road, if some of them are to go to Ikeja, maybe they will die on the bridge, but they are making their little money here”.