A cross section of journalists at the event.

Story by Dili Utomi.

“What TTP has done is that they have been able to clear the corridor aspect of the traffic and that is what we are talking about right now, the issue of terminal charges and others are not what we are talking about today”.

Above is part of the response by a former president of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Chief Increase Uche who gave the answer during the questions and answers session of the conference organised today by NAGAFF titled: An Appraisal of the Effectiveness and Efficiency of NPA/TTP of Traffic Flow.

It was a big media event where the number of newsmen far outnumbered the guests and this made the atmosphere a but tense. Many questions were deliberately thrown at the officials from the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) who were seen as speaking for a private organisation like the Trucks Transit Park Limited (TTP), the managers of the ‘eto’ application platform for traffic control around the Ports corridor in the Lagos area.

The event had started with an address from the president of the association, Chief Tochukwu Ezisi who was represented by the general secretary, Mr. Chiemeka Godfrey Nwosu.

Part of his speech says “We vividly recall – and with some nostalgia — the harrowing experiences endured by port operators prior to the arrival of TTP. During that time, business activities were nearly crippled. Many companies were forced to shut down operations and relocate from Apapa, and in many cases, from Lagos entirely. Property and real estate values plummeted. Both the federal and state governments suffered significant revenue losses. Several traffic de-congestion task forces and measures were implemented, but the problems persisted”.

The president noted that “We are reliably Informed thet TTP Ltd has successfully processed approximately 2.7 million port-bound and non-port-bound truck movements through the Eto traffic management system. Over the past 49 months, under the supervision of the NPA, TTP Ltd has contributed to a 65% reduction in the cost of transporting cargo to and from the Lagos ports, The typical turnaround time for trucks entering and exiting Apapa and Tin Can ports has reduced drastically from 2-3 weeks to less than 3 days”.

On these figures, the news hounds wanted to know how NAGAFF could prove that these are real, but the NAGAFF officials were insistent that the presence of the service providers has been the catalyst that expedited smooth movement of trucks and other vehicles into the Apapa Ports areas.

Mr. Nwosu had gone on to say in his speech that “Significant improvements have also been recorded In cargo evacuation from both Apapa and Tin Can — two of Nigerla’s major industrial centers. Whereas fewer than 50 trucks could be evacuated dally In the pre-Eto era, the FMCG and Oil & Gas industries can now evacuate over 400 trucks per day.

He also added that in the real estate sector, property values In Apapa have appreciated significantly saying “according to our research, the Eto technology has directly created around 225 jobs, and empowered over 500 ancillary workers within the port environment”.

“In view of these notable milestones achieved by the NPA/TTP Ltd, and the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, we, as stakeholders, acknowledge that more still needs to be done. We urge the relevant authorities to make concerted efforts to sustain and consolidate on these achievements. The old tradition of failing to build upon progress should be discarded.

From left, NAGAFF officials, Igwilo, Nwosu and Uche at the media event.

Mr. Arthur Igwilo, one of the NAGAFF officials present at the conference had responded to a question by saying that “NAGAFF in its wisdom decided to form a technical committee to look into some of the issues militating against operations in the sector because we have special relationships with shipping companies, terminal operators and government agencies”.

Chief Increase Uche had also responded to some of the questions by saying that transport infrastructure help to improve the services in other businesses. He added that “we can now observe today that transporters are doing courier services and so we can say that the number of jobs created could be even more than had been stated”.

Mr. Nwosu has also advised that the NPA should approve the use of e-tags so that the problem of abuse will be taken care of as no truck will have access to the Port area without the tags.

He added that NAGAFF has the responsibility of ensuring that the interest of stakeholders are protected. “At any time that the TTP fails in ts responsibilities, we shall also call the media to highlight those areas that they need to improve on”. He concluded.

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