Dangote kicks against presence of Customs, others at Apapa port access road

By Richards Adeniyi

The Chairman, Dangote Group, Alhaji Aliko Dangote, has expressed concern over the number of task forces on the Apapa port access roads.

Dangote gave an indication that their presence was not helping matters in the ongoing reconstruction work on the road.

He told newsmen at the site of the construction work recently that the number of security agencies needed should not be more than three.

According to him, only Police, LASTMA and FRSC officials were needed.

He particularly kicked against the presence of operatives of the Nigeria Customs Service mounting road block on the road.

Dangote said he will write the federal government to plead that only three security agencies were needed.

He was quoted saying, “Only three we need and we are going to write formally to the government to help us and then remove all these agents especially the Federal Unit of Customs. If they want to set up a roadblock I think this is the wrong place to set a roadblock.”

During the inspection, he also pointed out that Nigerians were losing N20bn daily as a result of the bad road.

According to him, what is being lost is 20 times more than the cost of reconstructing the road on daily basis.

He said, “we will make sure we decongest this area. You can see the dangerous things happening there. Now trucks are static on the bridge and these are supposed to be passing weight and not static weight. I think we need to check the stability and credibility of the bridges because they have actually overloaded them. I am a little bit worried about them.”.

He promised that the reconstruction work will be completed on or before the end of June this year.

He commended the company for doing a solid job on the construction of the road.

“AG Dangote is doing excellent job. The road construction is funded by Dangote, Flour Mills and NPA. The quality of the road is really very impressive and amazing because we thought we are just doing a normal road but even in Germany you cannot see this kind of road. This road will last at least a minimum of two generations.