Cartels who collected N300,000 from truckers before ETO fighting back — TTP

The firm handling the Electronic Call-Up system for trucks at the Lagos Ports, Trucks Transit Parks (TTP), has raised the alarm that some individuals, both outside and in government, who benefitted from the extortion of N300,000 and N250,000 from truckers along the port access roads before the implementation of ETO (electronic call-up system) are already fighting back to frustrate the electronic call-up system.

Speaking with the executives of the Transportation Correspondents Association of Nigeria (TCAN) in Lagos late on Wednesday, the Managing Director of TTP, Jama  Onwubuariri, explained that the ETO app has been upgraded 160 times since its inception in 2021.

According to the TTP boss, “After the port concessioning in 2006, a lot of the spaces within the ports that were being used for packing trucks temporarily while waiting for their cargo or to drop or pick up were now being used for stacking containers.

“Again, as I said, the population has grown, so import and export activities have increased. The spaces that the trucks have used to wait in the ports while they are being serviced are now being used to keep cargo.

“So because of that, we now had a tailback of the trucks on the port access roads. Now, when you bring in what we typically call the Nigerian factor, some people want to make quick profits out of any negative situation that they see. So you had law enforcement agents; you had private actors getting involved to help drivers get faster access into the ports.

“Effectively, that led to a sort of cartel that if you do not pay N300,000 or N250,000, your truck will not get into the ports. It was a bit of embarrassment for us as a country.

“There was even a time that the government came up with what they call a presidential tax force on Apapa traffic, all geared towards finding a solution.

“But what we told the government is, an ad hoc approach is not going to solve the problem. You need a targeted, long-term, technology-driven solution. So we developed the ETO app as an indigenous application that will deal with both the issue at hand and the invisible Nigerian factor which comes with it.

“So what ETO has done since its introduction in February of 2021 is to assign roles to every stakeholder. Lagos State Government and the Nigerian Ports Authority are to ensure that there is enforcement of the standard operating procedures.

“So before you see the truck on the road, they need to have been on an electronic queue before they come out on the road. And there are certain factors that will determine their place in the queue. Factors like, when did you book? When did you notify the system that you have a business? Where are you going?

“If you are going to Apapa Port, for example, what cargo or what business are you going to do relative to the second truck that is going to Tin-Can and is going to carry bulk cargo instead of containerised cargo? Other factors also look at how ready the terminal is to receive you.

“When you see congestion on the road, it means that there is also congestion electronically, because what that means is that you have a lot of trucks booking to go into any of these destinations without a measured readiness or speed of those destinations attending to them. So you can use the electronic platform to now monitor the efficiency of the road.

“So the federal government has been very happy with what we’ve been able to do, but there are still a lot of challenges within the system. As I mentioned, you have the Nigerian factor.

Some of the people who were on the road collecting N250,000, N300,000 per truck in 2020, and early 2021, are not happy that an electronic system has now come to take over their work and their so-called means of livelihood. So we’re still experiencing a lot of opposition and challenges from such individuals and sometimes organisations.

“There are also those who are found within the government sector. They are part of the employees of government agencies, but because of their particular roles, they were part of those who were benefiting from the old system. So sometimes when approvals for innovations come to them for recommendation, their recommendations are negative.

“Despite these setbacks, we have made over 160 upgrades to the ETO app since February 27, 2021. Just like you have your Google apps and other apps that you use, and they are upgraded from time to time, we’ve made over 160 upgrades to the ETO app since inception. These upgrades are to increase the security, the ease of doing business using the application, and to cure identified problems, which we get from our workers on the field.”

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