The National President, National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA), Mr. Lucky Amiwero has called on the relevant authorities to consider a change in the process of inspecting goods coming into the country for optimum gains.
Amiwero who was speaking at a public forum organized by the Standards Organization of Nigeria (SON) in Lagos recently disclosed that what was obtained currently in the country was not the best adding that other nations of the world had changed their processes of inspection, the reason the World Customs Organization (WCO) developed the SAFE framework.
According to him,” SAFE framework is to facilitate trade and secure our products. When we look at how we are inspecting our cargo in this country and what we are supposed to have done is to do what other countries are doing”.
“SAFE framework has come around and changed the process and what we should be doing now is that we are supposed to have inspected everything outside the country before they come into the country”.
He however decried the process where SON have to test products outside the country before they were shipped into the country only for the same product to undergo another testing on arrival at the ports or border stations describing it as duplication of a process leading to high cost of doing business in the nation’s seaports, airports and land border stations.
“We must change the process of our inspection. If you look at our inspection, what America has done, America has already changed their process, China has changed their process, everybody have changed their processes, only in Nigeria, we have almost 80 percent of cargo interest within the sub-region and everything, ammunitions coming into this country, it is disastrous”.
“What America has done, they have three projects, they have what is called Continuous Security Initiatives. Continuous Security Initiative posted their customs officers outside various countries, if you go to various countries like South Africa, you see American Customs there, they inspect their cargo before their cargo comes into the country because everybody is not talking about revenue, we are talking about security”, he said.
The NCMDLCA boss opined that the ammunitions in the country was enough to bring down the whole of Africa positing that only when Nigeria effects a change in its inspection process that the incidences of fake products would be reduced in the country.
According to him,” we have a law that can midwife that, I have advised the Ministry of Finance on that and we are to represent it so that SON and Finance can go together and this process will become simpler because the law is still there, it has not been abrogated”.
“It is Decree 11 of 1996, it is very clear and it talks about quality, quantity and value, then when you talk about quality you are talking about product regulation”.
