Inter-agency collaboration, enforcement of traffic laws panacea to highway gridlocks – Fashola
Story from Abah ADAH, Abuja
Nigeria’s Minister of Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has urged robust inter-agency collaboration and effective enforcement of traffic laws to ease the characteristic gridlock on the nation’s highways.
Fashola who made the observation on Monday during an inspection tour of the ongoing Apapa-Oshodi-Ojota-Oworonshoki Expressway reconstruction project in Lagos, called for traffic laws enforcement to tackle gridlock caused by indiscriminate parking of trucks on roads in Apapa axis of Lagos, according to a relayed News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) report.
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The Minister also noted that port concession agreement and lack of loading bays was compounding Apapa gridlocks and stressed the need to make other ports in the nation viable to decongest the over-stretched Lagos ports.
He stressed the need for inter-agency collaboration towards resolving the challenges as well as adequate enforcement of traffic laws to remove the trucks causing an obstruction on the highways.
“We provided a truck park so that people can get off the road. So, this is now calling for only one thing, enforcement.
‘’It’s a multi-level problem also. Government has to enforce the law, I have to enforce the law. We all have different levels of enforcement.
“Traffic enforcement is FRSC, truck management is Ministry of Transport. We just need to come together and find an answer; street hawking is local government, road traffic law is state government, we just have to work together, this can’t continue this way,’’ he said.
Fashola said that Apapa port was overwhelmed and overstretched by cargo and there was a need to make other ports attractive through incentives for people to use them.
The minister expressed optimism that the ongoing Lekki Deep Sea Port project would decongest Apapa Ports when completed.
He said that the ministry constructed a road in Calabar Port to address the problem of headroom to make it attractive to businesses.
Speaking on the Apapa-Oshodi-Ojoto-Oworonshoki project, the minister said sections one, three, and four were almost completed, adding that the recently awarded section two was 10 per cent completed at 8.4 kilometres (KM).
Section one of the project spans from Liverpool Round through Creek Road to Beachland near Sunrise and is about 10 KM.
Section two is and spans from Beachland to Cele Bus Stop.
The project was inaugurated by President Muhammadu Buhari in November 2018 to resolve Apapa gridlock and ease port congestion.
The contract was awarded to AG Dangote Construction Company Ltd at the cost of N73bn under the Tax Credit Scheme of the Federal Government.
