The Truck Owners Association of Nigeria and an organisation identified as the Logistics Practitioners Association of Nigeria are exchanging blames over an alleged N40, 000 demanded from truck drivers to enable them access Apapa port.
The Logistics Practitioners Association of Nigeria in a statement had called on the Police and Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to probe the access fee.
The statement signed by the Public Relations Officer, LPAN, Tunde Oyebola, read in part, “We at LPAN are demanding the investigation of imposition and collection of N40,000 per truck access fee on the Mile 2 – Tin Can Island route to Apapa Port, Lagos, by a group that calls itself truck owners, in collaboration with the Presidential Task Force on Apapa Gridlock.
“We seek the urgent intervention of the EFCC and the Inspector -General of Police to conduct an investigation into this illegal practice to ensure that the noble purpose for which President Muhammadu Buhari set up the task force to clear the Apapa gridlock is not defeated and lost to extortionists.”
LPAN insisted that the truck owners’ group was neither known in the law nor registered under the trade union Act with the mandate to regulate traffic or impose fees on transporters.
“They lack the authority to collect levy of any kind from truck drivers before granting access pass to use a federal road as crucial as the access to the Apapa Port from the Mile 2 axis.
“Their activities have introduced new bottlenecks to the ease of doing business at the Apapa port in Lagos.”
Responding, the Truck Owners Association of Nigeria denied the bribery allegation while calling for a probe of the petitioners.
The truck owners accused those who alleged extortion of being the mastermind of unbridled extortion of truckers before the creation of the task team on Apapa gridlock.
The spokesperson of the truck owners association in the Tin CAN Mile 2 axis; Mr Salami Ismail said the petition was against the real owners of articulated vehicles in the axis and also against the Presidential Task Team.
Ismail disclosed that the petitioners were not happy that their source of illegal funds was cut off by the presidential task team, that according to him, had been dealing directly with genuine truck owners in the task of ensuring that the two main access roads into Apapa were free of vehicular traffic.
He said further that those behind the petition were “truck pushers,” middlemen, who did not have trucks but only sought to assist genuine truck owners to gain access into the port for a fee, a practice that ended with the intervention of the Presidential Task Team.
