Our members are dying by the day

While many have continued to lambast articulated vehicle drivers for taking over Lagos highways and literally locking down the city, the drivers in return are firing back. They accuse the public of insensitivity to their plight, and are singling out ‘corrupt’ uniformed officers as major contributors to the gridlock. Medinat Kanabe reports.

WITHOUT doubt, the gridlock on Apapa-Oshodi Expressway in Lagos has become a sore thumb, sticking out so badly and practically making life impossible for the constantly mobile Lagos crowd. Over the past year, things took a worse turn, when the gridlock, which had been limited to Apapa/Mile 2 axis, spilled over to a section of Eko Bridge, as far as Western Avenue, right up to Ojuelegba Bridge. But just when Lagosians thought that was the worst possible scenario, the truck and tanker queues extended to Ikorodu Road, another major 10-lane passage in the city. On the Apapa end, the articulated vehicles took over every of the five-lane highway from Apapa to Cele Bus stop. Not even the express directive by the revered Vice President Yemi Osinbajo was able to achieve much in terms of respite.

Notably, the gridlock, for about a month, ebbed, following the vice president’s intervention, with the truck and tanker drivers creating a couple of lanes for vehicles to ply, as against the previous total lockdown; but the status quo seems to have returned, with Apapa axis again reversing to its near impregnable state. Expectedly, aggrieved Lagosians have not spared the truck and tanker drivers, whom they have come to see as insensitive, recalcitrant and outright wicked. They cannot understand how a set of people could so damn the visible consequences of their actions, which have caused them long hours in traffic, sweat, sometimes blood and driven many road users blood pressure to the limit.

But the vehicle drivers have also been speaking. According to several of them spoken to, they have their own woes, which Lagosians may never understand. Many of them confessed that they are not happy living in the traffic, as that has literally become their lot in recent years. They listed various inconveniencies, including living in inconducive vehicles, long distances and months away from their families, extortion by uniformed officers, illness and death, as the challenges they are facing.

Not a pleasant experience

52-year-old Abubakar Ibrahim got to Cele bus stop on August 1, 2018. When this reporter met him, he had already spent 28 days in the traffic and was just at the popular 2nd Rainbow Bus-stop. Looking dirty, tired and sickly; he gathered himself to speak with this reporter.

“I got to Cele on the first day in August and I have been moving little by little since then.”

By a quick calculation, he had been in the traffic for five weeks at the time of this interview, and still weeks away from the port.

Asked if he knew the cause of the traffic, Ibrahim said, “The military men at the front are collecting bribe to pass vehicles. They collect as much as N40, 000 to pass a vehicle. I don’t have the money to pay for express passage, so I have to stay here. This place has become a home for me. I only call my family, I don’t see them anymore. I don’t even have money to send to them because if I don’t go and drop the container and go for another trip, I won’t get any payment. I haven’t sent money to my family for a while now. Feeding has also become very difficult, and we’ve had to buy a cooking stove and pot, which we now use to cook inside the container.”

Ogundele Ezekiel, a tanker driver, whose vehicle is in the waiting traffic, told this reporter that tanker drivers are not the cause of the traffic but the trailer drivers. “There is a free road for tanker drivers to drive into the port, but the container drivers are blocking the road. Another thing is that the soldiers before Mile 2 Bridge are collecting N3000 from vehicles passing into Kirikiri, while the police collect whatever you give to them, as long as it is reasonable. Look at my light, I wanted to pass, a soldier stopped me and began to break my light when the road was free.”

Ezekiel said these days, he spends about three days on queue before he gets to the port, unlike before when from his Ilorin base, he can make the trip two times in a week.”

To alleviate the logjam, he appealed to the government to channel the container drivers to another place, where there is space and less traffic gridlock.

Death on the road

Ayodele Pius, a tanker driver, however thinks bad roads are the cause of the traffic. “We don’t have good leaders in Nigeria. If you go to Cele (Bus-stop) through to Apapa, you will see container drivers in traffic. There is a junction here at Abule-Ado where tankers fall everyday because of the pot-holes and craters

“We spend like a week on the queue just to go and get products. Mosquitoes will bite us. Some of us die from stress; one of us just said he wanted to relax and went into his tanker and died. We can’t leave the vehicles here and go away because bad boys will remove everything they can sell. They rob us sometimes but we can’t still leave. If we must go to toilet, we pay N50 for public toilet.”

Before now, Pius also disclosed that he used to do three trips in a week to the port from his base, but now does only once a week.

He explained that the situation is gravely affecting his income and spending power: “I get paid N5,000 per trip, so that should give you a picture of how it is affecting my pocket and family?”

He therefore said, staying days and weeks in traffic is not a delightful experience for them and appealed to the government to play its part by fixing the roads.

Shaibu Ibrahim, who lives in Kaduna, told this reporter that his itinerary  takes him as far as Kano, Katsina, Sokoto, but lamented that problems only set in once he enters Lagos. “We spend about a week to get our products in Lagos. (Pointing at his vehicle) This is where we sleep. We are robbed at night. The boys take our money and our phones. We bath in the open because we don’t have money to pay for public toilet. We also fall sick because of exposure to the weather; please tell the government to fix the road.”

Another trailer driver, Ogun State-born Rahman Ojerinde, blamed the whole problem on the port computer, from where they are summoned. “If they call us, we will go; if they don’t call us, we stay here. The people handling the computer are lazy and probably slow. When it was manual, the movement was fast but since the introduction of computer, the process has really slowed seriously.”

Another cause of the traffic, according to Ojerinde, is the ongoing road construction in Area B down to Leventis, though Apapa Eleganza Road.

Looking back, he said, “Many years ago, there was nothing like hold-up on the axis. I have been on this job for 30 years, and I used to do three trips in a week; but look at me now, it is 20 days and I am still trying to move into the port.”

Ayo Gbade, whose motor-boy left him to his fate, said he is tired and may quit the job once he delivers this last container. “How much will I make in the 20 days I have been here? True, I live in nearby Agboju but I can’t leave the truck here for any reason because anything can happen.”

Showing this reporter the deplorable place he sleeps, Gbade said, “My motor-boy is not the only one who has left, many people, including drivers, call their bosses to come and pick up their trucks, that they no longer want the job.”

Another trailer driver who joined in the lamentation, said he arrived Cele Bus-stop en route the port 23 days ago and yet hasn’t got anywhere near his destination.

“From Cele Bus-stop to 2nd Rainbow alone, I spent a week. We celebrated Eid-el Kabir here, yet my destination is 2nd Gate after Tin-Can! Only God knows when I will get there.”

On what he thought could be causing the traffic, he said, “Instead of the Navy officers there to pass the line, it is those who manoeuvre that they pass. During the day, they will not pass anyone until the night; and at night, they only pass 10 to 20 vehicles.  If we don’t pay the N30, 000 or N40, 000, we will not pass. We can’t even get proper sleep. If we are asleep and we here that the line is moving, we wake up and move.”

Gbade however disagreed with Ojerinde on the issue of computer slowing down the process. “I have carried this container, headed for 2nd Gate since July 27 – nearly two months ago. The owner of the container knows that I am on the road but he cannot do anything because he doesn’t have the money to pay for ‘express’.

“Just this month (August 2018) about 6 of our colleagues have died; the most recent was last week, when one of us who was sick went into his truck to relax and didn’t wake up.

“Government said we should be on the line but the line is not moving. When we reach there after staying on the line, we pay N500. Those who are supposed to control it are not controlling anything; they are just interested in the money. “Sometimes, some people who pay for ‘express’ get to their destination and get turned back. So, they go and start again and the money paid goes to waste.”

He spoke of some notable companies, which trailers wait aside until night before moving. Sometimes, they pass 30 of their trailers at once after paying 3million naira. Police, soldiers, and other military outfits collect money from us with promises that they will take us across but many times, they turn us back.” He said.

A trailer driver simply referred to as Yaro, said he has been on the queue for 23 days. “My wife and children are in Kano and keep calling me. They cry whenever they call, saying they are not sure I am fine. I’m not even able to send money to them. They have a feeling that I will die on this road.”

A driver, who refused to give his name said his wife got pregnant for another man because of the traffic. “I was away looking for money for them to eat and in the process she slept with another man and got pregnant.

It’s a rant of frustration, says the Navy

RESPONDING to the allegations, the Commander, NNS Beecroft, Commodore Eyo Okon, who took time to take this reporter around Apapa to see the condition of the roads, decried the allegations of corruption on his men

“How can the Navy be the cause of the gridlock. The roads are so bad; it is not a road where traffic can move smoothly.”

Blaming the drivers’ reaction on frustration, he asked, “Do you know what frustration can do to people like the trailer drivers, when because of the condition of the road they are unable to channel out? They can put the blame on anybody and put forward any reason. They go through a lot in order to move and they are paid based on their turn around. So if he comes and sit down on the queue for one month and is not paid, it means he is not working.

“I am sure you were in town in July when all these things started and the Navy led the team to clear the road and what we have now is an improvement from what was. Then no-one could move and because of their complains, I removed the people on the road. Following the vice president’s intervention, we managed to get to this level of sanity,  and now they are talking like that. It is very bad; they are leaving the issues and chasing nothing.”

The commander said, “The main problems that we have now are the roads. The Ministry of Works has opened everywhere and they are covered with nothing. I cannot carry myself and make the roads. They tried to free water from the other side of the road to the gutters but because the gutters are blocked, the water runs to this part of the road.”

Continuing, he said, “Not everybody on the road is having that same challenge, objective or urgency. The people with empty containers have a completely different problem. The port has to be ready for them; and right now I am working with the port, they, will raise the call up, which we will use to know who will proceed. To that extent, I cannot go and ask a trailer with empty container to start going to port when the port is not expecting that container.

“So that man will have to grumble and think that the Navy is the cause of the whole thing.”

Commodore Okon said any container driver, who does not get clearance and gets to the gate will inevitably be turned back.

He said, at the moment, the NPA is trying to encourage the shipping agencies to go and open their holding bay, but for the time being, they should organise a call up system, and give the navy a list, which they will use to sort them out.

About the tankers, Okon said, “If you talk of tankers, those are not going to the port; they are going to their tank farms and their tank farm is almost all the time, ready for them. So we are not going to tell them to be queuing with containers because we don’t know when the containers will even go. We don’t want to shut down the country.

“So we actually try to sort out the tankers and help them to proceed to their tank farm because they are ready to receive them.

“There are also people whose locations are not within the port, like the manufacturing or the cargo. If we want to ask everybody to move in line, we would have shut the country down and nothing will move, because where the man that is in front is going may not be ready for him in the next three weeks. And we can’t have everybody wait for that person; we have to find a way to make way for him to continue. So if the man that has been waiting ahead of such person sees him driving past, he will attribute it to him sorting some people.”

Okon also said “There are companies with large fleet like Dangote, Flour Mill Nigeria and the likes – you know Dangote can bring over 300 trucks in one day; for such, we will wait for a quiet hour, when the normal traffic have died down, and give them a window of say one hour or one hour and 30 minutes to go in. Because their location is ready! All we do is just put them on a route that they cannot conflict with anyone at that time of the night. And you know, the more we remove the trucks from the roads, the better for even those who are waiting because fewer trucks will be waiting.

The structure will receive less pressure and the road will be made ready again for other drivers, buses, small car owners. If we don’t do this in the night, it can’t work.”

Commodore Okon also recognised that there are people who like the chaos and are eager to use the situation to discredit them. He however maintained that the navy would not allow their blackmail to distract them.

He showed this reporter a small office, which the navy built to give the drivers an avenue to lay their complaints, just outside the Navy Junction before his office.

He said, “Almost all the roads have been shut down by the Ministry of Works, so the available road is this one that passes through the Navy Junction which leads to my office.

He also said, “If we don’t control the traffic the way we are doing now, they will block the entrance to my office and that will cause problems for us, especially if there is emergency and we need to mobilise.

Another major reason for the logjam, the commodore said, is that “the vehicles are not in good condition. Because of the economy, people cannot muster enough funds to buy new vehicles. They buy vehicles that are almost scrap and they break down everywhere and cause traffic.”

He also said what the country needs to ameliorate the situations is infrastructural development. “We need infrastructure. Even the port which was originally built to take just 30, 000 metric tons is now accommodating 800, 000 and the infrastructure in the port is not improving with the quantity.

“Another thing that can be done is to channel some of these activities to other ports in the country. Those other ports are attending to less than what they can take; but because of insecurity and other factors, everybody wants to come to Lagos. Smaller waterfronts can also be accredited to receive some of these containers to reduce the pressure. We have already damaged the structure with the way we are citing tank farms everywhere.” Okon finished off.

It’s blackmail – Police

THE Public Relations Officer of the Lagos State Police Command, CSP Chike Oti also said the allegation is false. Citing blackmail, he said, “These guys were blocking the entire expressway and it got to a point when the police and other law enforcement agencies could not stand by and watch.

“A troop led by the commissioner of police Lagos State brought sanity on the road by taking some of the trucks to a garage and told others that couldn’t be accommodated  to take a line instead of blocking the road. This did not go down well with them, hence this kind of blackmail.

However, Oti said the command is closely watching activities on the axis: “Our monitoring  team is there monitoring the activities of our officers that are there and anyone caught going against the rules will be dealt with.”

Almost corroborating the naval commander, Oti said, “Take note that we are not in charge of how they are called. This is the sole responsibility of the port authority, so there is no way we can take them across. Therefore the allegation is fallacious.”

first published in The Nation of September 15, 2018