ASPMDA sends SOS to FG, Ambode on tankers’ traffic hell along Badagry highway
President of Auto Spare and Machinery Dealers’ Association (ASPMDA), Chief Daniel Offorkansi on Wednesday, lamented the huge loss incurred by his members to the hellish traffic gridlocks experienced daily along Lagos-Badagry Expressway.
Addressing journalists in his office after conduction newsmen along the blocked expressway by petroleum tankers, he said “Business operators at the Lagos International Trade Fair complex including ASPMDA members are passing through hail on a daily basis to access the complex and exit at the end of their daily businesses”.
“We are losing billion of naira on a daily basis as many of our customers from every part of the country using Badagry Expressway find it difficult to access the complex with their haulage vehicles due to the endless double parking of articulated vehicles on both sides of the every lane with impunity”.
Offorkansi therefore called on the federal and state governments to find a lasting solution to the menace, saying “Upon we are suffering the traffic hiccups caused by the ongoing road expansion and reconstruction on the expressway, the double parking of tankers have made both life and business very difficult for the over 100,000 business owners at the trade fair complex”.
“Added to the difficulties in access the largest market in Africa due to the tankers menace, many of members are robbed on a daily basis after close of daily business on their way home.
ASPMDA President further decried that “Armed bandits hide under the cover of the parked tankers at late evenings to launch attacks on traders who are stocked in the standstill traffic”.
According to him, there may be chances of prices of auto spare parts to go up as there are strong indications that the cost of imported parts may rise following the rising cost of haulage of cargo at the Apapa port in Lagos by over 500 per cent in recent times.
He revealed further that truck drivers who carry their containers from the ports have hiked their charges per container from the sea ports in Apapa to warehouses in the complex from N120,000 to N700,000 due to the challenges they face in struggling along the road from the port to ASPMDA.
