Tanker drivers plying the Apapa road have decried the inhumane treatment and torture meted out to them by some naval officers, who they allege extort huge sums of money from them daily before their excruciating movement inwards the port.

This came on the heels of two drivers who were handcuffed to a truck in the scotching sun at the weekend by a naval officer after allegedly brutalizing them in the bid to extort money from them. The Guardian gathered that almost all the tanker and truck drivers face similar situations everyday if they refuse to pay between N150,000 and N200,000 before they can proceed to the port.

It was the turn of Saheed Arowoshafe and Kamoru Atoba, two tanker drivers who faced the same torture at the weekend after been beaten severely and handcuffed to a trailer for hours.According to Arowoshafe, who lamented his ordeal to The Guardian, “the naval officer came and met us inside our trucks where we do sleep and told us to stand up. I asked what happened, he said he would slap me and the next thing was that he started brutalising me. I kept on screaming what have I done. He shouted at me to come down from my truck. I kept begging him while he continued to hit me. 
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“I was on my way to Mile 2, I didn’t insult him, he hit me everywhere, my face, my body and tore my clothes and I was begging him but he refused to listen. The truck driver in front of me was also asked by the naval officer to step down from his truck. The next think was that the officer brought out handcuff and handcuffed both our hands to the back of a trailer packed under the sun. He took the keys and left us to perish under the sun for more that three hours.” 

The drivers revealed that the naval officers are the brain behind the traffic congestion at Apapa road, stressing that the officers purposely refuse to allow them pass just because they want to extort money from them, especially once it is nightfall.

Confirming the hazards faced by the tanker drivers, the Vice Chairman, Nigerian Association of Road Transport Owners (NARTO), Lagos State chapter, Abdullahi Inuwa, lamented that the drivers are exposed to the inhumane treatments of the naval officers, in which the association wades in to come to their rescue.

He said this has lead to some of the drivers been badly injured while some are in a worst state of health. He added that he received the information about the two tanker drivers who were handcuffed and instructed that the naval officer be found and the drivers released.
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“For more than two hours, they were in search of the officer until he was found and the drivers were released and given first aid. We want government to intervene in this issue before we record more deaths or some tanker drivers go violent,” he said.

It would be recalled that the Petroleum Tanker Drivers (PTD) have recently appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to check the excesses of naval officers at the Apapa loading depots in Lagos. The appeal, contained in a statement issued by Mr. Salmon Oladiti, the National Chairman of PTD, an arm of the National Union of Petroleum and Natural Gas Workers (NUPENG), noted that the activities of the officers were causing untimely death of drivers apart from impeding loading of oil and free flow of traffic.

“Navy illegal operations are the major problems of tanker drivers; there are so much extortions, harassment and beating of our members who failed to meet their demands. We want the activities of the navy to be checked; they are not trained to be controlling traffic. Their activities are affecting our operations. We want them to be withdrawn from the road.”
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