*Container-Brothels Spring Up
*Experts List Panacea
The loathsome perennial Apapa gridlock is gradually doing more havoc to the nation than imagined as there are now growing cases of rampant child abuse at night, following the springing up container-made brothels at the Tin Can Island port, with a flourishing night market, where condom, liquor, cigarette, quick sex are the most demanded commodities.
With a night of Investigation by MMS Plus Weekly at the most dreaded spot of the gridlock, very revealing, experts have once again listed its consequences and panacea.
It was so long a night, recently at the Tin Can Island port, Apapa-Oshodi Expressway, precisely, opposite the port complex, as our Correspondent who was trapped at the traffic mess used the opportunity to uncover the other side of the gridlock.
As usual, with trucks and other articulated vehicles parked at both sides of the expressway, blocking the flow of traffic, there is a night market with concentration of huge population of buyers and sellers, with mini-power generating sets, selling all kinds of commodities mostly liquors, cigarettes and condom.
Teenagers were sighted hawking liquors around the hidden contours of the darkness separated by the stationary trailers parked in disobedience to the law. While some hawked their wares, other teenagers and supposedly married women were seen donating sex in exchange for money at the sides and under the vehicles, relieving the biblical Sodom and Gomorrah.
Our investigation that night shows that condom was “codedly” sold to those who needed them and the demand was high.
A senior management staff of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) further confided in MMS Plus Weekly that they had discovered containers used as brothel at the night market, which is situated at the truck transit holding bay opposite the Tin Can Island port complex.
These containers are used for quick sex market by those in need at the rate of #1,500 minimum for short-time.
On the environmental side, the market in turn generate heaps of refuse, dotting the different sides of the expressway, with the oozing odour creating health hazard to motorists and port users.
However, a management staff of NPA has alleged that the leadership of the Association of Maritime Truck Owners (AMATO) and other related groups were responsible for renting the space for the brothel and market operators.
While the Chairman of AMATO, Chief Remi Ogungbemi could not be reached at press time, observers believe that they may not know that such atrocities exist at the spot at night.
Surprisingly, no security operative by any name was found that night at the market or on the blocked road, even when there are numerous traffic control security outfits set up to control traffic both at day and night on the road.
Speaking on this, Engr. Olu Akinsoji, former Nigeria’s Alternative Representative to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), attributed the gridlock to the indiscriminate erection of structures in the ports by the concessionaires in defiance to the port order. He noted that the port reform did not provide for a given structural reform in the port system, advocating that all abnormal structures erected by the terminal operators be demolished.
Speaking on the way out of the port corridor gridlock, Dr. Mobolaji Stephens of Federal University of Technology , Akure, Ondo State, said, “imported petroleum products should be moved via pipelines to Mosimi Depot in Ogun State from where distribution to all the states will commence by pipeline or road trucking, and there should be a national policy to this effect”.
According to him, “land-use alteration around the ports and environs should be discouraged and with the two proposed national policies in place, the land-use will gradually revert and tank farms around the port environs will disappear.”
In his contribution, the former port manager, Tin Can Island port, Barr. Ephraim Effioita, noted the need for synergy between the ministries of petroleum and transport, adding, “one of the major things that we have discovered here is the citing of the tank farms, indiscriminately and, of course, the agency that licences the construction of tank farms is different from the one that authorities the citing, and there is no co-ordination, that is why we have this chaos. I don’t know how this problem can be handled.”
