Ambode Visits Apapa, Laments Traffic Gridlock

Lagos State Governor Akinwunmi Ambode has visited major traffic points in the Apapa area of the state to get a first hand experience of the traffic snarl. He appealed to the Federal Government to mobilise the contractor awarded the construction of Apapa road networks to immediately return to site.

Ambode, who was accompanied on the tour by top officials of the state government and security agencies, said he was particularly disturbed about the traffic congestion commuters and motorists are condemned to on a daily basis.

“What we have done in the last three hours is trying to find out what are the issues that partain to Apapa. We’ve all seen that the gridlock in Apapa is multi-faceted. We have examined things that relate to activities of trailer and tanker drivers,” Ambode said in a statement signed by his Chief Press Secretary, Habib Aruna.

“It is totally unacceptable that we would be having tankers and trailers on our bridges. It is also not acceptable that they would decide to block all lanes that lead to Apapa. We’ve also seen that we must do something immediately to alleviate the challenges that the residents and business owners are facing.

“But again, you’ll also realise that the roads that lead to Apapa Wharf and Tincan Island actually belong to the Federal Government. We’ve come to this Tin Can Bridge, it has been under construction in the last six years, we’ve also seen a trailer park that can actually contain about 500 trailers at a time that has been abandoned by the Federal Government.

“What we want to do now is firstly to appeal to the Federal Government and most especially Mr. President that the contractor working on this particular bridge should come back to site and once we are able to open the trailer park, we would be able to allow other trailer and tankers to use the park.”

Ambode also raised concerns over the activities at the 57 tank farms in the area, saying they constitute great security challenge for the state government. He therefore said that the owners of the farms will be summoned for a meeting soon.

“The greater part of this challenge is posed by the tank farm owners. As we speak we have 57 tank farms around Apapa alone, that’s a major security challenge for the state government.

“We have to start to look at the security issues relating to these tank farms. All trailers across the country come to these tank farms and the tank farm owners, we are going to direct them in the next few days, they would be summoned to a meeting and they have to tell us what their remedy is to this menace that we are having in Apapa.”

As a palliative measure towards ensuring free flow of traffic, Governor Ambode said a task force would be immediately set up to ensure 24 hours surveillance of traffic flow while stressing that the Lagos Road Traffic Law will be enforced to the letter.

“Right now on our part, the immediate palliative is that we will set up a task force that would involve most of our security agencies including the police and to do a 24/7 monitoring of the traffic.

“We would pay more attention to enforcement. From this evening you would see that there would be more attention on enforcement and we would also fund that enforcement which we will fund. We are going to give incentives to our law enforcement officers to ensure that the Lagos Traffic Law is obeyed.

The governor also assured that road networks in deplorable state in Apapa will also be given attention.

Governor Ambode, who also visited traffic points in Ajah Roundabout assured that a joint task force will be immediately deployed to ensure free flow of traffic.

 

 

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