Apapa Gridlock: Fashola And The Burden Of Unfulfilled Promises

Mr. Babatunde Fashola, Addressing Newsmen at Apapa road recently

In the run-up to the 2015 presidential election, Babatunde Fashola passionately asked Lagosians to vote for Muhammadu Buhari so as to have an opportunity to have the same party in charge in Abuja and Lagos. In fact, within the first six months of being in government, he argued, a President Buhari would rehabilitate the long-neglected roads. He, at one of the campaign rallies, lamented that businesses were shutting down in Apapa and that people were living a very traumatic life.

The joy of port users knew no bounds when the same Fashola was appointed by newly elected President Buhari to, among others, superintend over the Ministry of Works. Their joy was not misplaced, as Fashola does not need permission from any authority to make a case to the Federal Executive Council for the reconstruction of the roads. But sadly, after almost four years of taking charge of the Ministry of Works, Fashola has not only killed the joy of port users, he has watched as the roads degenerate to a national shame.

He built an aura of a poster boy of diligence. He had access to almost unlimited funds with the huge cache of revenue his state generated annually. And in the battle to oust President Goodluck Jonathan and the PDP in the period leading to the 2015 elections, he provided journalists with exciting lines that further endeared him to the people.

“Any responsible government will fix the power situation within six months,” he had said, and urged the people to vote his APC party so Nigerians could enjoy regular power supply within six months.

He spent his second tenure as Lagos State governor lambasting the federal government, regularly assailing it for abandoning the access roads to Apapa, home to the largest sea ports in Nigeria. He blamed the federal government for the chaotic situation of the road and urged the government to come out with concrete steps to address the traffic gridlock as residents and offices located in Apapa were beginning to look for alternative offices and homes outside the area. Just as he proclaimed on electricity, he promised that an APC government would reconstruct the artery roads to the country’s economic nerve centre immediately after taking over power.

But Babatunde Raji Fashola, Minister of Works Power and Housing, two-term governor of Lagos State and, until recently, the poster boy of efficiency is now caught in the web he ringed during his second term as governor. To his good fortune, or maybe not, President Muhammadu Buhari gave him arguably the biggest portfolio that is an amalgam of four ministries, including electricity and infrastructure development where attending to the port access roads directly falls under.

Before the state of the roads turned to a national shame, Fashola had in 2012 become worried to a level that he had to write to the federal government, after several unheeded verbal outpourings.

Specifically, Fashola had on September, 17, 2012, forwarded a detailed presentation of what should be done to fix the road and ease the traffic congestion to Vice President Namadi Sambo. In the letter entitled “Re: Report of the Deterioration and Regeneration of Apapa, Lagos,” Fashola sought to make a presentation on the state of the road and what the restoration would take, to the National Economic Council.

Apparently overwhelmed by the contents of the presentation, the Vice President wrote back to the governor, suggesting that the matter should be brought to the attention of President Jonathan. In the reply dated October 3, 2013, the Vice President, through his Deputy Chief of Staff, Engr. M.A.K Abubakar, stated that in appreciation of the detailed nature of the presentation, which is reckoned to be beyond the consideration of the National Economic Council (NEC) the matter should be brought to the attention of the President for his consideration.

Fashola in deference to the counsel, on November 1, 2013, wrote to President Jonathan stressing the need to urgently reconstruct the road.

The above efforts were all when Fashola was governor. The question still remains whether there is significant change to what is obtainable today. The answer is capital NO.

Nearly four years down the line, however, the super minister, as was the case in his infamous proclamation on solving power problems within six months, is caught in the web he strewn as governor. Rather than improve the chaotic state of the access roads on assuming office, a combination of absence of a coherent policy or strategy, a convoluted process of award of contracts and unavailability of funds have seen the state of the roads deteriorate under Fashola’s watch. Today, long lines of trucks and container carriers have permanently blocked the stretch of the two major roads leading to Apapa and Tin Can Island ports.

In a recent report, Bloomberg, the international business journal, derided Nigeria’s quest to be classified as Africa’s biggest economy ahead of South Africa. The congestion outside and inefficiency within Nigeria’s ports is choking the economy, which vies with South Africa as the continent’s biggest, and causes havoc for businesses that use them to import everything from cars to computers, food and machinery, the magazine reported.

The problem of decaying infrastructure has worsened in recent years, especially at Apapa. Crumbling roads have all but ground trucks to a halt. Presently, it takes a minimum of three weeks to clear products, compared with 48 hours in neighboring Benin and Ghana, according to the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI). In the words of the report, Nigeria loses $19 billion annually, or about five percent of her gross domestic product, from the delays, traffic jams, illegal charges and insecurity that are increasingly prevalent at the ports, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry said in a report this year.

In the World Bank’s Trading Across Borders survey, which measures the time and expense involved with importing and exporting goods, Nigeria ranks 182nd out of 190 countries, even below Syria and Afghanistan, two war-torn countries. Such is the obstacle on the path of evacuation of containers from the ports that the cost of hauling containers from the Apapa Port to warehouses within Lagos is now N700,000 per container, which is over 483 percent increase against the N120,000 charged previously for a 40-foot container and N80,000 charged for 20-foot container as late as the first quarter of 2018.

Apart from the World Bank’s survey, the Organized Private Sector (OPS), whose businesses are being chocked by the deplorable state of the roads, also articulated their loses.

Consequently, the LCCI in collaboration with other members of the Organized Private Sector (made up of MAN, NECA, NACCIMA, NASME, NASSI) and the development partner, Centre for International Private Enterprise as part of their commitment to the Nigerian economy, carried out a fact-based feedback study on maritime industry. The report released in 2018 was entitled “Nigeria: Reforming the Maritime Ports”. The report which computed the losses incurred by their members at about N1.2 trillion, highlighted the realities in Nigerian ports.

By May 2017, Fashola who by then had spent two years in office, was still short of words to explain his failure to get the port roads fixed. “A couple of private companies have offered to work with us to fix the roads and I think in a matter of weeks, we should be able to commence work. We are very close, we have held two meetings in the last 10 days with the companies and have agreed; what is left now is for us to formally sign the MoU,” he had said. He said the delay in its commencement followed the commitment of the ministry to ensure transparency in the procurement process of the project.

At the flag-off on June 17, 2017 of the rehabilitation of the Ijora end of the port access road, a section of the Apapa-Wharf Road was shut down for one year to enable its reconstruction. The N4.34 billion project is jointly sponsored by Dangote, Flour Mills, and the Federal Government. The two kilometres road reconstruction between Apapa Port and Ijora end of the bridge is expected to take one year. Fashola explained that the use of AG Dangote for the construction was to give the road a better outlook with the use of concrete laying. According to him, the reconstruction is to resolve the traffic challenges usually encountered on the road. But less than four months to the end of the administration and elections in the horizon, all the projects are stalled. And the nightmare for port users has worsened.

With that, the former governor lost his voice. He did find it, though, on the political turf as the campaigns kicked off. “Do you know that power is rotating to the South West after the completion of Buhari’s tenure if you vote for him? A vote for Buhari in 2019 means a return of power to the South West in 2023. I am sure you will vote wisely,” Fashola had said at a recent town hall meeting on infrastructure.

Expectedly, this drew sharp criticisms from Chief Olabode George, a former military governor and chieftain of the PDP. He asked Fashola to leave the politics of 2023 and figure out how to fix the port access roads and other roads in the country. “Fashola is the Minister of Works. Look at the key roads from the ports, they are in deplorable state and these roads are the gateway to the nation’s economy. It costs a container to be moved from Apapa ports and Tin- Can to Ikeja N1 million. Just one container and that is what it will cost to ship the same container from Shanghai in China to Lagos.

“So, the minister needs to fix those roads now instead of postulating about 2023. These roads have not been maintained for years. If goods cannot come out fast from the ports, it will affect those who are buying and selling and if things cannot go into the ports for export, how will people make money?

“Fashola should be concerned about fixing these roads before May 2019 because he will come back someday to give account to the people,’’ he said.

What really is the reason Fashola has frittered away the opportunity to relieve the hardship the roads have foisted on the commuters, especially when as a governor, he claimed to have made attempts to reconstruct the roads, but was frustrated by the PDP- led federal government? Is his failure to reconstruct the road part of Lagos politics or has he joined his assumed traducers to intentionally cripple Lagos economy?

A frontline freight forwarder, Anefi Mohammed, blamed the bad state of the access roads to the sea ports on Fashola. “I do not put blames of the poor access roads to the ports on Hadiza Bala Usman, but on Babatunde Fashola. As governor, his complaints were that the then Federal Government under the PDP refused to cooperate with him to fix some of these economically viable roads, such as the roads leading to the ports, and that was why he was unable to fix them. He is now the minister of works in charge of the same roads, and the roads have become worse. What has he to say?” Not much really. It is similar to the proclamation he made on stable power supply which he had claimed can be fixed within six months. He has since denied making the statement. But unlike the drama on electricity, he has no alternative fact on rehabilitating the port access roads. His party is in power, he already had a road map for fixing the roads as governor; there is no political obstacle.

With a no-show nearly four years on the job, Fashola may have just been caught in his own web. And just as his claims of politics preventing the reconstruction of the roads resonated with the people then, there is greater interest on what next Fashola may be up to in explaining his failure. While he is at it, the words of Mr. Jonathan Nicol, President, Shippers’ Association Lagos State (SALS), that the country loses about N1 trillion annually to ports in neighboring countries due to bad access roads to Lagos ports and the gridlock continue to ring loud. “There is massive diversion of Nigerian-bound cargo to neighboring ports since over seven years that port users have been facing the deplorable condition of Apapa port access roads,” he stated.