Apapa:MARAN Accuses Osinbajo Task Force Of Extortion

The Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria, MARAN has accused the Presidential Task Force On Restoration Of Law and Order In Apapa headed by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of turning the team to a cash cow it now uses to extort port users and other stakeholders in the port.

MARAN, the flagship of maritime reportage, in a release to the magazine called for the dissolution of the team and prosecution involved in the extortion.

The statement reads thus:

The Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria, MARAN has accused the Presidential Task Team On Restoration Of Law and Order In Apapa, led by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo of turning the team to a cash cow it now uses to extort port users and other stakeholders around the port.

According to a press release by the flagship association, the team has over stayed it purpose and therefore should be disbanded.

The statement reads thus:

After extensive checks, the Maritime Reporters’ Association of Nigeria (MARAN) can report authoritatively that Commissioner of Police Hakeem Odumosu, the All Enforcement Lead of the Presidential Task Team on Restoration of Law and Order in Apapa, Lagos State, may have converted his position into an avenue for alleged self-aggrandisement and illegal enrichment of his cohorts.

Instructively, in the Task Team’s terms of reference, the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) is saddled with the responsibility of Security and Enforcement Supervision.

The Task Team’s Police Team Lead, Assistant Commissioner of Police Sulaiman, is one of the successors to Odumosu as Chairman of the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences.

Impeccable  sources claimed  that Odumosu allegedly operates a private office located in the Yaba area of Lagos where road haulage fleet operators routinely visit to lodge bribes ranging from N500,0000.00 to N2,000,000.00 to procure un-receipted approvals that facilitate movements of their vehicles over certain agreed periods to and from the ports in Apapa.

Notably, the Task Team’s Police Team Lead, during his tenure as a one-time Chairman of the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences, had continued on the trajectory of heavy-handedness trod by his predecessors, including Odumosu, which has established this nebulous organ of the Lagos State Government as a veritable Gestapo squad sadistically spreading sorrow across the state without restraint from the principals.

These extortionist  tendencies, which  the duo have introduced  into the Task Team’s mission, have infested  their subordinates  who now regard the Lagos ports access roads as paved with gold for their pickings.

It would be recalled that Sulaiman had, during his tenure as Chairman of the Lagos State Task Force on Environmental and Special Offences, created three zones manned by his acolytes, ostensibly to cover and sanitise Apapa and environs adequately, but, which operations ended up endowing the operatives with reputations of new height in corruption.

MARAN further learnt that, apart from the illegal payment point derisively referred to as Odumosu Bank by hapless road haulage operators, at the Second Rainbow, Mile Two, and Kirikiri sections of the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway, squads of the Task Team routinely demand and collect the sum of N80,000.00 per truck to issue what they claim are “approvals from our Abuja Office for the release of arrested trucks.”

Similarly, the Task Team’s operatives routinely demand and receive bribes of the sum of N80,000.00 in order to accord  truckers with  unqualified trucks “priority access” to the Tin-Can Island Port Complex (TCIPC) and the Lagos Port Complex (LPC).

MARAN is sorely disappointed that, owing to the tendencies which gloss over the deep-seated rot perpetrated by the undesirable elements in uniforms, notably the Police, the words encapsulated in the terms of reference of the Presidential Task Team on Restoration of Law and Order in Apapa have failed to be transformed into achievements.

And to think that there was so much promise in those words as the adhoc body was mandated to see to the “the development of an effective management plan for the entire port area traffic, including the cargo, fuel distribution and business district traffic; enforcing the permanent removal of all stationary trucks on the highway, and the development of an effective manual truck call-up system, pending the introduction of the electronic truck call-up system.

It also includes the implementation of a workable Empty Container Return and Export Container Truck Handling Policy, amongst others”

However, with the benefit of its vantage position as watch dog and  well-informed industry stakeholders, MARAN is not surprised that, in spite of its wide-ranging membership, the Presidential Task Team on Restoration of Law and Order in Apapa has performed woefully in the execution of its brief.

Sadly, over four months after its inauguration following an emergency meeting convened by the President and chaired by Vice President Yemi Osinbajo on April 25, 2019, at the Presidential Villa, Abuja, Nigeria’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), the Presidential Task Team headed by Vice President Osinbajo as Chairman is yet to sign off as having executed the directive issued by President Muhammadu Buhari to eliminate in quick time the gridlock that has bedevilled the Lagos ports city of Apapa, permeating the environs.

MARAN has closely observed and duly noted the drama being played out on the Lagos ports access roads over the years, including the respective reigns of the numerous task forces that took turns exacerbating the traffic situation while feeding fat on extorting road haulage operators and other commercial vehicle operators as the roads infrastructure and the environments of those locations generally degraded and presented serious security and health challenges.

It is glaring that the Presidential Task Team is merely failure-on-arrival and incapable of restoring law and order in Apapa, even as its operatives, in the manner of those who worked in similar adhoc bodies in the past, excel in routinely intimidating and regularly extorting huge sums from road haulage operators.

Chief Remi Ogungbemi, the Chairman of Association of Maritime Trucks Owners(AMATO), couldn’t agree less with our position when he confirmed that extortions of various kinds are still going on among the task team members.

He even echoed our fears that no amount of numbers of  task forces can eradicate the malignant traffic gridlock on our port access roads until requisite infrastructures such as motorable roads , trailer parks and containers holding bays are provided.

The constant recourse to task forces, we believe, is an ad-hoc arrangement that keeps postponing the evil days but which  provide an open sesame for such task force members to enrich themselves.

It is safe to conclude that, apart from the country’s Vice President being a member and also heading it, another major difference between the Presidential Task Team and its immediate predecessor is the slight change in the composition of the band of uniformed extortionists that form its members.

Instructively, in creating the team, Mr. President had directed total withdrawal from the roads of military personnel who have been prominent and dominant features in several of the contrived exercises to unravel the Apapa gridlock.

Even as the Presidential Task Team on Restoration of Law and Order in Apapa has strenuously avoided having the words “task force”, preferring “task team”, in its nomenclature, operatives of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF) that are saddled with the task team’s “Security and Enforcement Supervision” have been most forceful in effecting this merely for the sake of extorting humongous sums from road haulage operators.

A special panel constituted by the Nigerian Navy (NN) to investigate allegations of extortion of truckers on the Lagos ports access roads by its personnel that served in the disbanded Task Force had recently submitted its report to the Chief of the Naval Staff (CNS), Vice Admiral Ibok Ekwe Ibas.

Varying degrees of sanctions were recommended by the panel, which had mainly been instigated by allegations of the sum of over N100,000,000.00 having been found in the bank account of a junior officer; the sum suspected to be proceeds of bribes collected on Lagos ports access roads whilst he was a member of the defunct Task Force.

With the swelter of outrage over the overwhelming extortionist influences of the Police in the Task Team, it is only proper to wish that the Presidency dismisses the Police from the Lagos ports access roads, just as it did with the Navy in the wake of the strident complaints by distraught industry operators indicting the Navy for suffocating extortion, among other gross abuses of its privileged position as head of the defunct Task Force.

Will the Police summon the needed will to toe the line of the Navy and investigate its personnel that make the lead security agency for the Task Team?

MARAN expects the Police to do just that and sanction those found culpable accordingly!