Indications are rife that the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) may have revoked the long-standing agreement it had with APM Terminals over the Lillypond Terminal otherwise called the Ijora terminal. This is even as findings revealed that the NPA management has set up a committee to look at the possibility of turning the facility into a trailer park that will ease congestion of truckers along the ports access roads.
Disclosing this exclusively to the Nigerian Tribune, Engr. Adams Jatto, NPA’s General Manager in charge of Public Affairs, said the move became imperative as a way of addressing the traffic crises facing Lagos ports.
Jatto disclosed that NPA had to revoke a five-year lease agreement it had earlier entered with Lilypond Container Terminal Limited (LCTL).
According to him, “the authority will resume activities there to do some expansion work and ascertain the number of trucks to be accommodated at the Ijora facility. The agreement with APM Terminal over Lillypond Terminal, for now, is revoked.”
He added that NPA will adopt an orderly electronic call-up system for trucks to be parked in the terminal before they access the ports in Lagos to address the traffic issues.
It would be recalled that NPA had earlier leased the facility out to APM Terminals through LCTL in 2006 for a ten-year concession arrangement which expired in 2016.
Consequently, after the expiration of the lease, the terminal was however reclassified and granted a five-year development lease.
Efforts to get the Spokesman of APM Terminals, Austin Fischer proved abortive as calls and text messages put across to his mobile phone were not responded to as at the time of filing in this report.
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