Truck drivers ordered to stay away from Lagos

The Lagos State government has directed owners and operators of articulated vehicles/trailers and petroleum tankers, to stay away from the state “for now”.

Acting Commissioner for Transportation, Olanrewaju Elegushi, said the move was to curtail the gridlock that had taken over Apapa and its environs.

Elegushi, at a briefing on Friday, said the incessant traffic bottleneck in the area had impacted negatively on commercial activities.

Steve Ayorinde, the Commissioner for Information and Strategy, who was also present, said: “We keep having this issue of gridlock in Apapa because issues that the ports authorities and the concessionaires are dealing with are recurrent and the spillover effect of those issues are causing all these.

“If the ports can’t determine how many trucks they are able to deal with on a daily basis; how they are informed about coming in and going out, then it will be a problem to deal with.

“What we need to do is to keep on engaging with them, we keep on engaging with other states and so on. I mean, people who have trucks in other states and already know that there is a logjam in Lagos, why send other trucks to Lagos?

“The idea is not to say don’t come into Lagos. It is part of what makes the economy of Lagos what it is but we are saying let us deal with the logjam that we have presently and there is no way we can deal with it, we can only deal with the effect because the causes essentially have to do with the operations at the Ports and that is why we are appealing to them.”

The government, however, urged the operators to utilise the Ogere trailer park and other parks outside the state in the interim.