The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has advised its members who were licensed by the Nigeria Customs Service as its agents to take advantage of the ongoing inspection by the Customs License Inspection Committee at the NAGAFF headquarters in Lagos to verify their status with a view to renewing their licenses in the coming year.
The National President of NAGAFF, Dr. Eugene Nweke who made this call in Lagos in a chat with newsmen last week said the exercise which was now brought down to Lagos as against the practice of freight forwarders having to travel to Abuja to get them down to Lagos to inspect their offices was to save cost for them.
Nweke who said that the exercise had been on for the past two weeks also listed what the team will be looking out for to include ones’ premises, staff, the structure of the organization, tax payment and other necessary documentations that made the firm a registered one.
He further said that the exercise when successful, one would be issued with a certificate which according to him was a new order by the management team of the service to ensure that every license owner must adhere to their requirements.
“It is an annual event that gives the customs the right to inspect the premises of every license they have issued to the owner, inspect the premises and ensure that it meet the requirements as required in their regulation”.
“Instead of people not knowing how to get across to them, you come here you meet them, they have enough time to go round. As they are here, they are also positioned at Eleganza building doing the same job”.
“Every NAGAFF member and freight forwarders should contact them now, from here, they go and carry out their inspection and come back. So, this is like a take off point, rather than going inside the ports, moving up and down, they will call you where are you? So, when you come here, you present your document and they go through”, he said.
On what happens to those who failed to take advantage of the exercise in Lagos now, Nweke had this to say,” it is a committee thing, if they conclude, they go back to Abuja and if you say you didn’t hear about it, that means you will go to Abuja to meet them. That will translate to expenditure for you and they will now come down again by this time, at your own instance”.
