The Minister of Transportation, Mr. Chibuike Amaechi, has expressed shock over the truck-free Apapa seaport road during President Muhammadu Buhari’s visit to Lagos last week to commission the Deep Blue Project.
He identified inefficiency as the major problem of Apapa seaport, saying that terminal operators must contribute to the total reconstruction and reorganisation of the port.
A statement issued by the office of the minister stated that he said this on a TV programme, citing the drastic change in the port on the day the president visited Lagos.
Amaechi said, “I was in the train with the President on that day and noticed that everything had disappeared, even inside the port that looked like a market place was very well organised, no persons were found loitering about, no trucks. What it shows is that the problem of the seaport is the problem of efficiency.
READ ALSO: Bala Mohammed Appoints New Chief Of Staff
“If they had the capacity in just one night, because I was there the previous evening, and when I came back in the morning, everything had disappeared; If that can happen in one night, it means that the problem is management, nothing else. Do we need to wait for the President to come before we can be efficient?
“What I’ve done, was to have a meeting with the terminal operators, and I told them that they have to contribute to the reconstruction of the Apapa seaport.
“We must rebuild the Apapa seaport, taking into cognizance all the issues that we are seeing now that is frustrating the Seaport, like where do you park the trucks, how many trucks are coming into the seaport at what point in time?
“How can a person come into the seaport who has no business being there, what is he doing at the seaport?”
