NPA Awards N3bn Road Project In Apapa

The Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) has awarded a 1.6 kilometre road project contract worth N3 billion to PW Nigeria Limited, to rehabilitate the main artery way for the port of Lagos inside the Apapa Port to boost trade facilitation at the nation’s gateways.

The road project, according to the NPA, is meant to facilitate port activities, especially in cargo carriage along the Apapa port.

Speaking at the facility tour of the road project with his management team in Lagos, few days ago, Managing Director, NPA, Umar Suleiman told newsmen that the road was a dual carriageway of three lanes, adding that the road project was key to the Federal Government’s transformation agenda and ongoing port reform.

According to Suleiman, the road project was undertaken because of its significance to the Lagos ports activities, especially in helping to ease the traffic inside the Apapa Port.

The NPA’s helmsman said the road project would be completed within 18 months by the consortium of contractors handling the project, adding that the idea of rehabilitating the road was conceived about six years ago but for bureaucratic bottlenecks.

He said the road project was strategic to ports users since all key maritime companies operating at the nation’s ports make use of the road.

“This is the outcome of our struggle for the famous 1.6 kilo metre road which is a road in the heart of Apapa Port operations. This road is supposed to service all the terminal operators operating inside Apapa Port. We have been on this project for six years now, but we are happy that the project has started now after much delay.”

He continued: “The processes that led to the delay was sometime due to the lack of understanding of the port environment by government agencies.

“The first thing that pulled down this project was when it was sent to Bureau for Public Enterprise to vet the proposal. As I explained in the bill, we wrote the proposal of the road project as a dual carriageway project, and I think when they were analysing the project, it was assumed that it would be just two lines on each side.

“So, the project was cut down to a level that the project cannot be executed. On sighting this, when it was returned to us, we now asked them to revaluate the project to six lanes plus the lay-bye areas, which is about 3.5 metres.

So we had to take it back and you know how the processes are. And this made us to haveanother battled with evaluation of the project again. We had to wait till we were able to agree on the project cost.