Vincent Toritseju
Lagos — In a bid to avoid extortions and arrest suffered in the hands of the officials of both Federal and Lagos State governments for parking on the roads, the National Association of Maritime Transport Operators, NAMTOP, have begun moves to establish truck parks across Lagos state.
Already, NAMTOP has gotten offers from some landowners in the state but are currently seeking the support of the government with a view getting funding from financial institutions for the project.
Speaking on the development, a patron of NAMTOP, Chief Remi Ogungbemi, said that the group want to be careful before embarking on the project adding that it wants to ensure that the policies of government will not in any way affect the project.
Ogungbemi who is also the President of the Association Maritime Transport Owners, AMATO, said that NAMTOP has written to the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy over the group’s desire to acquire its own truck park adding that it will ease the current effort put in place by the Transit Truck Parks, TTP, to manage traffic along the port corridor.
Part of the letter reads: “As part of our effort as a solution to address the problem of inadequate truck park that has been responsible for the chaotic gridlock and indiscriminate parking of trucks along the port access roads, we write to seek the support of your Ministry to acquire landed properties around the Mile 2 and Lekki Deep Seaport axis to enable us build modern truck park transit park with state of the art technology solutions in line with our resolution not be waiting for the government to provide everything.
“Unfortunately, what both Federal and State governments are fond of doing as solution is to set up Taskforce to humiliate, terrorize, arrest and tow away trucks and slammed outrageous bills that end up in private pockets, leaving and subjecting truckers to be poorer, and that’s why most of our trucks are in a rickety and dilapidate conditions, because the money we suppose to use to maintain them are being collected directly or indirectly, in the name of working for government and using government machineries.”
NAMTOP has been offered a 51-acre piece of land by the Saint Matthew Daniel’s family at a total cost of N12.750billion, about N250 million per acre.
Ogungbemi explained that the moment the group is able to get the government to buy into the project, it will approach financial institutions for funding.
