The Chairman, Coalition of Port Dry Cargo Transport Operators, Abdullahi Mohammed Inuwa has exonerated his members from the alleged diversion and theft of containers loaded on their trucks saying that it was hijackers who commits the heinous crime and not his members.
Reacting to an allegation from the National Publicity Secretary of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Dr. Kayode Farinto who told newsmen in Lagos Tuesday that the association had recorded cases where cargo exited from the ports were missing and untraceable just because such transporter and trucks suddenly became nonexistent, Inuwa while acknowledging the fact in the statement however attributed the development to hijackers on security agents’ uniforms.
According to him,” It do happen within our members but you find cases of hijacking, at times you see uniformed men blocking some of our trucks and bundling our drivers inside their cars and some people will drive away the trucks and at time we will see the drivers stripped naked and tied down and their trucks recovered after some days at a different location without the cargo.
“It does happen but it has to do with hijacking which is common in both the wet and dry cargo. So it is a challenge”.
While stating that those who divert and steal containers on the highways were armed robbers on the road, he disclosed that there was a time the truckers set up a taskforce to tackle the menace which was led by himself adding that the truckers made some reasonable progress at that time.
“We even found out that if they hijack our cargo, I don’t want to mention the barrack but they used to use one of the Army Barracks, the Mammy market shops that is, which they converted to warehouses, if they hijack our container, they will take it there and nobody suspected that such a thing will happen inside a barrack. That was about 4 years back.
“So we went there and recovered almost 7 trailers of goods, there were tyres, motorcycle spare parts, fertilizers and even Ajino-moto. But it happened that the Commandant was not aware. The man, the owner of the warehouse deceived his as an importer importing goods”, he said.
On whether the incidences of diversion and theft of containers had been eliminated since after the discovery, the Coalition Chairman said,” It does happen, about three weeks ago, one of our trucks along Kirikiri loaded tyres and during the night, some people came with Hilux and drove away the truck and we successfully recovered the truck along Ogun state but some of the tyres about 200 of them had been carted away”.
He therefore called on all stakeholders to join hands with the truckers to rid the road of hijackers since the act amounted to economic sabotage to the nation rather than passing the bulk adding that playing blame game with such a serious matter would never bring solution to the crime.
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