The founder, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Boniface Aniebonam has said that contrary to the general believe, that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has not ordered the DTI operation training about winding up at the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Secretariat in Lagos.
It will be recalled that ANLCA had last Tuesday commenced a two-batch DTI operation training to prepare its members on the operation of the DTI in their offices following then envisaged closure of the commercial DTI centres by the NCS.
But in an interview with newsmen in Lagos yesterday, Dr. Aniebonam while appreciating the leadership of ANLCA for its proactiveness and foresight in organizing the training however said that NCS was not privy to the training as was stated.
According to him,” Let us face this one and it is laughable but one can appreciate the proactiveness in the leadership of ANLCA. The training that is going on there has nothing to do with customs, customs is not privy to that, they are not the ones that ordered for any training and I am sure that you know that when somebody like me is talking, I am talking as an authority who have access. I am an ex customs officer, so, I can get information right away.
“I appreciate them for thinking that way but the truth of the matter is exactly why I am telling you that the customs law needed to be looked upon and certain sections in it should be repelled. We can no longer accommodate or continue with the licensing regulations of customs in this dispensation, with this global challenge in the international trade. And even that license is not being used in ASYCUDA, what is being used is the Tax Identification Number. So, that license is of no consequence as at this time that customs is on e-commerce or what you call paperless shipping.
“So, there is no directive from the customs on that as regards issue of password. It is mere propaganda. However, on our own part, while we contest, we are hearing all those rumour and we are following up. We will also begin to train people on computer with regards to the issue of usage of password not necessarily because of the threat to close down the commercial DTIs and enhanced licensing regulations of customs via corporate bodies. We will be training individual practitioners to have access to computer so that if at the end of the day, may be this year, in two years or in five years’ time, it must happen that CRFFN is the regulatory body that controls the practice of freight forwarding in Nigeria and therefore, every practitioner properly trained, skilled, certificated by an approved institution will have freight forwarders’ registration number like they have customs service number, then the ICAN number and so on. That is what we are going to use in making entry.
“So, if I want to answer your question, whatever is happening in ANLCA is not of customs, quote me and I am sure of what I am saying. So, anybody who is going there, I don’t know who is giving him certificate or whether customs will use that as basis for password or license, it doesn’t make any sense. It is good that people acquire knowledge especially as customs advance in e-commerce and shipping is becoming paperless and everybody should be compliant with computer age”.
When asked if the Zonal Coordinators of Zone A of the NCS, ACG Charles Edike was not a statement from the customs, he said,” If you are conducting training and you invite him to come and flag it off, does it mean that it is customs that is powering that? If I even want to go further, I can tell you that I spoke with the ACG Edike myself and what he told was that, because I requested that my people should also have access to the resource persons that had to do with computer training and yesterday, a call was pit across to me and we are working on it”.
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