Immediate past minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, has been blamed for the deplorable state of some roads in Apapa.
The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) said Fashola treated with levity several letters the body wrote to him requesting that he gives his approval for the NPA to undertake repairs of some of the bad roads.
It therefore blamed the Federal Ministry of Power, Works and Housing for its inability to contribute in fixing some parts of the deplorable Apapa port access roads.
The NPA was responding to the recent tragedy of a fallen 40 footer container that rested on three vehicles at Apapa for which condemnations are trailing the incident because of bad roads.
General Manager, Corporate Communication of Nigerian Ports Authority, Adams Jato , said NPA had indicated willingness to fix some portion of the road leading to the port by writing Fashola’s ministry but was ignored.
Jato expressed NPA’s concern over the difficulties suffered by port users and the various losses they had to incur as a result of the poor state of the roads leading to and exiting from one of the largest port in West Africa.
He said: “While this incident is regrettable it is on record that the present management of Nigerian Ports Authority, under the leadership of Hadiza Bala Usman, had before now written series of letters to the Federal Ministry of Works Power and Housing to hand over the port axis of the road to NPA for complete reactivation at NPA cost to no avail .
“It took the personal intervention of the Managing Director to involve Dangote and Flour Mills with NPA counterpart funds to re-construct the wharf road from Leventis to Apapa port.
“The NPA is not unmindful of the havoc and damage this road is causing the port operations and the revenue loss albeit the sufferings to the port users but as stated the Management is handicapped and not that nothing is being done.”