Tanker, truck accidents huge loss to economy – LCCI, others

 The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry has observed that the economy is losing a lot to the frequent cases of truck and tanker accidents.

The Director-General, LCCI, Mr Muda Yusuf, told the Media that the country was losing a lot in terms of resources, reputation, perception and pressure on infrastructure.

Yusuf was reacting to the tanker fire that occurred on the Otedola Bridge on the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway on Thursday in which 54 vehicles were burnt and nine lives were reported lost.

The tanker fire incident is coming barely one week after a truck carrying plywood fell on three commercial buses and a private car under the Ojuelegba Bridge in Lagos.

The accident, which occurred on June 20, claimed two lives, while several other people sustained injuries.

On September 2, 2015, a fully-loaded 40-foot container-laden truck skidded off the same bridge and landed on a black Toyota sports utility vehicle passing underneath.

Also badly damaged by the container were a black Toyota Corolla and a white Nissan Sunny saloon car trapped in the gridlock when the accident occurred.

The incident caused a stampede, as motorists plying the busy route abandoned their vehicles and fled for their lives.

In an interview with a Media outlet, the Chairman, Seaport Terminal Operators of Nigeria, Mrs Vicky Haastrup, also expressed worries about trucks lining up on Lagos bridges and the amount of pressure they exerted on the bridges.

She feared that the bridges were not built to withstand such pressure.

Although the line of trucks on the bridge linking the Apapa Port has reduced owing to the completion of work on one section of the Apapa Wharf Road, stakeholders say there is more that the government can do to remove trucks from the roads.

“The government needs to fix the rail lines so that most of the trucks that come into Lagos will not have to move by road,” Yusuf said.

The President, Chamber of Shipping, Obiageli Obi, sought the relocation of the cargo base from the Lagos port, saying that this would reduce the amount of trucks coming into Apapa, while reducing the gridlock resulting from the situation.

The traffic gridlock resulting from the number of trucks going into Apapa has been a challenge to the ease of doing business, both for importers and exporters.

For instance, exporters say it takes two weeks to get products to the port, as a result, warehouses are fill with stock of goods waiting to be exported.

Some have had their supply contracts terminated because of the delay in exporting the goods.

For importers, the cost of transporting cargoes from Lagos to other parts of the country has gone up by about 300 per cent, leading to a general increase in the cost of doing business and prices of products.