The firm handling the electronic call-up system for trucks at the Lagos ports, ETO, Trucks Transit Parks (TTP) has raised the alarm that some individuals, both outside and in government, who were benefiting from the extortion of truckers along the port access roads before the implementation of the new system are fighting back.

Speaking with the executives of the Transportation Correspondents Association of Nigeria (TCAN) in Lagos on Wednesday, the Managing Director of TTP, Jama Onwubuariri, added that the ETO app has been upgraded 160 times since its inception in 2021.

The TTP boss said: “After the port concessions in 2006, a lot of the space within the ports that were being used for the park of trucks while waiting for their cargo. The space is now being used for stacking containers.

“The population has grown; so import and export activities have increased. The space that the trucks used to wait in the ports while they were being serviced is now used to keep cargo.

“Hence, we had a tailback of the trucks on the port access roads. When you bring in what we typically call the Nigerian factor, some people want to make quick profits out of any negative situation that they see.

“So, you had law enforcement agents, you had private actors getting involved to help drivers to get faster access into the ports. Effectively that led to a sort of cartel that if you did not pay N300,000 or N250,000, your truck would not get into the ports. It was an embarrassment for us as a country.”