The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Seme Border chapter has said that the only panacea for a successful tenure for the new Customs Area Controller (CAC) of the Nigeria Customs Service Seme Area Command, Comptroller Victor Dimka will be for him to be open to suggestions.
The newly elected Chairman of the chapter, Bisiriyu Lasis Fanu who made this known in a chat with newsmen in Lagos on Monday stated that it is only when the new CAC who have served in that command before now as a customs officer is opened to suggestions that he would have things fall in place in the command.
Fanu maintained that where he (Dimka) shut out every useful suggestion, agents would have no other option than to go to other borders close by to carry on their businesses which would in turn spell doom for Seme Area command.
According to him,” We want him to listen to us, we will bring suggestion to him, he take it, then the area will flow on. The only time he will find it difficult is when you give suggestion to your Controller and he said no. We believe he will do that because we have a sister border. If he refuses to do what we want, a lot of people will go to the other border.
“I think we pray the almighty God will make him listen to us and things will flow well”, he said.
He however thumbed up for Comptroller Dimka for having the political to dislodge the multiple checkpoints along the Lagos-Seme road saying that it took a lot of courage for him to achieve that.
“If you come to Seme, the checkpoints are cleared already. Dimka is now there and within a short time, he has cleared all the checkpoints though we still see about one or two of them arrived back on our way here this morning. But we are very sure that message was from the headquarters, they will go. We are going to do follow up to make sure that they are not there.
“That checkpoints were supposed to have been dismantled for quite a long time but unfortunately, you know in Nigeria anything can go. This CAC will come and say this is CAC’s checkpoint, this O/C Operations’ checkpoint. That is why we have so many checkpoints on that road but now, we have two major checkpoints at Agbara and Gbaji and though this morning on our way here, we found about one or two, the fact is that they parked their vehicles, they stood by the roadside, they are not doing anything and we believe they will not disturb people anyhow any longer”, he said.
On what he was going to do different as the Chairman of ANLCA, Seme border chapter, Fanu explained,” It is not too far-fetched. Everybody knows what we are lacking at the border. We lack so many things; we lack coordination by the agencies which have not been there. We have a lot problems here and there especially at the vehicle seat. We will address those problems to the satisfaction of the agents.
“We will tackle the problems at the vehicle seat, especially when an officer release a vehicle another officer on the road will stop that vehicle saying the duty paid on the vehicle is low. We want to see how we can harmonize the Federal Operations Unit and the Seme Command together. We don’t want a situation when an officer will release a vehicle, another officer will come and say it is not good”.
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