Business
‘Road Reconstruction, Solution To Apapa Gridlock’
The total reconstruction of
the entire stretch of the Apapa/Oshodi Expressway is the permanent solution to the enduring gridlock on the road.
The Lagos State Commissioner for Transportation, Mr Kayode Opeifa, made the assertion in an interview with newsmen in Ikeja last weekend.
He said the root cause of the chaos on the road, especially around the Coconut bus-stop and the Apapa ports, was that several portions of the road had failed.
The commissioner said the situation led to frequent accidents involving tankers and this had resulted in the total blockage of the road in the past.
“The problem affecting the Apapa end is that most portions of the road are bad, and that explains why tankers and trucks fall on that road, resulting in the traffic mess we always experienced there.
“Until the road is reconstructed, the problem on the Apapa axis will be very difficult to solve permanently,’’ he said.
Opeifa said the Federal and Lagos State Governments had a meeting in 2012 where the former promised to reconstruct the entire road to end the sufferings of motorists plying the route.
He, however, said that the Lagos state government was still expecting the Federal Government to fulfill the promise it made in 2012 to reconstruct the road.
“What they are doing now is palliative work and that will not solve the problem.
“You see, the blight spots are Coconut, Wharf and Creek sections of the road, but the ongoing palliative work is not extended to those areas.
“We have been consistently implementing our own part of the agreement we had with them, some of which was to manage the traffic and build inner city roads,’’ he said.
Opeifa said the state government was constructing no fewer than eight inner city roads and deploying traffic administrators there, to ensure sanity.
The commissioner, however, urged the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), and the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) to improve their operations, with a view to checking the menace of tanker drivers in the area.
He said that the state government would continue to do its best to alleviate the sufferings of motorists plying the road, but urged road users to obey traffic rules.
Governor Babatunde Fashola and officials of the Federal Roads Maintenance Agency (FERMA) have paid several visits to the area in recent times.
The Nigeria Inter-Bank Settlement System (NIBSS) has said that Bank Verification Number (BVN) enrolments rose by 6.8 per cent year-on-year to 67.8 million as at December 2025, up from 63.5 million recorded in the corresponding period of 2024.
In a statement published on its website, NIBSS attributed the growth to stronger policy enforcement by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) and the expansion of diaspora enrolment initiatives.
NIBSS noted that the expansion reinforces the BVN system’s central role in Nigeria’s financial inclusion drive and digital identity framework.
Another major driver, the statement said, was the rollout of the Non-Resident Bank Verification Number (NRBVN) initiative, which allows Nigerians in the diaspora to obtain a BVN remotely without physical presence in the country.
A five-year analysis by NIBSS showed consistent growth in BVN enrolments, rising from 51.9 million in 2021 to 56.0 million in 2022, 60.1 million in 2023, 63.5 million in 2024 and 67.8 million by December 2025. The steady increase reflects stronger compliance with biometric identity requirements and improved coverage of the national banking identity system.
However, NIBSS noted that BVN enrolments still lag the total number of active bank accounts, which exceeded 320 million as of March 2025.
The gap, it explained, is largely due to multiple bank accounts linked to single BVNs, as well as customers yet to complete enrolment, despite the progress recorded.