The managers of ‘ETO’ truck call-up system, Trucks Transit Parks (TTP) Limited, have said importers lose over N100 million daily due to extortion along access roads to the ports in Apapa and Tin-Can Island in Lagos.
ETO was designed for the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) to contain the gridlock around the ports.
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Speaking with pressmen in Lagos, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of TTP, Temidayo Adesoye, said it took his company over six years to understand Apapa gridlock and build the electronic solution deployed in February 2021.
He said 50 percent of Apapa traffic was bound for the ports, adding that the focus is to effectively regulate maritime traffic and solve half the problem.
“If everybody can just do the right thing, everybody will transit within 24 hours. But right now, what we are seeing is a maximum of 48 hours if it is not an export container,” he said.
He also blamed the slow start of ETO on transporters who failed to heed the initial call to register as only 120 truckers with 2,000 trucks registered and attended their training.
Adeboye however said a week after the deployment of the scheme, the number rose to 2000 transporters and 50,000 trucks.
“On the day we started, we managed to register 120 transporters and about 2000 trucks but after a week of kick-starting the process, we recorded over 50,000 trucks and more than 2000 transporters. This was possible because many port users couldn’t find a better means of accessing the port but to go through the system,” he noted.
