Many port stakeholders including customs agents and truck drivers have showered encomiums on the Port Manager of Tin Can Island Port Complex, Sylvester Egede for clearing the gridlock that had dogged the port access road for more than twenty years.
“It is like magic. Nobody was able to clear the road. People suffered for many years on this road but imagine, within a few weeks of the new Port Manager’s resumption of office, the road was cleared. It has remained very free since then. It shows that with determination and will, no challenge is insurmountable,” Wilson Okunbanjo, a licensed customs agent operating at the Tin Can Island Port said.
He said while the gridlock lasted, the government and businesses lost trillions of naira in revenue.
A truck owner and operator, Hassan Aliyu, said Egede was able to clear the port access road because he decided to tow a different path.
“He refused to collect bribe from anybody. He decided it was time to do the right thing. That is the secret behind the successful clearing of the gridlock,” Aliyu said.
Aliyu also commended the Managing Director of Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Mohammed Bello Koko “for providing the political support to the Port Manager to do his work”.
Recall that NPA in collaboration with the Federal Ministry of Works and the Lagos State Government recently worked together to bring sanity to the Tin Can Port access road. For more than 20 years, the gridlock on the road brought untold hardship to truck owners, importers, exporters and other port users.
The Port Manager of Tin Can Island Port, Sylvester Egede asserted that a combination of long standing work experience, environmental awareness and institutional knowledge contributed to solving the traffic challenges that impeded movement of vehicles inward from Mile-2 to the port.
He said the successful clearing of the access road resulted from enlisting the support of all stakeholders and security agencies to dislodge persons suspected of involvement in extortion and other form of illegalities on the road.
The Port Manager confirmed that the former state of the road had caused death of some road users and adversely affected government drive for trade facilitation and ease of doing business.
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