The National President, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu has said that the association will resist the attempt to repeal the sections identified by the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) as sections it proposes for repeal in the ongoing effort to amend the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA).
Shittu who disclosed this while speaking in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos said this had become necessary as the sections identified by NAGAFF as not being relevant in today’s international trade were sections that affected them as corporate license agencies.
He maintained that although it was not everything one put forward to customs for repeal that would be considered so warning that should customs go ahead and repeal those sections as being championed by NAGAFF, ANLCA would have no other alternative than to meet them at the National Assembly and make sure they were not repealed.
According to him,” I have seen the areas NAGAFF wants repealed but what they want repealed is what affect us as corporate license agencies and that one we are going to resist because it is not what you put forward to customs, if customs put it in the CEMA to be repealed, we meet at the National Assembly and we will make sure that it is not repealed because our trade is international trade that is internationally recognized”.
He maintained that there were benchmarks for their operations saying that customs brokers seen in Nigeria as well as their counterparts in America and South Korea were in operation based on regulations effected by the World Customs Organization (WCO) even as he said that Nigeria was not an exception.
“That is why there is no way the customs service in Nigeria will do without us. There is nobody who is a customs broker or licensed customs agent all over the world that is not regulated by customs and what they are asking for to my knowledge is like let us run ANLCA out of business, let us kick their ass because among them too, they have corporate license. So, why do you want to repeal when you know you can’t do any operation without license because you must be a corporate body to do your declaration.
“Shipping companies don’t deal with individuals, terminal operators don’t deal with individuals and then a corporate organization is easily held responsible for any infraction that even if the promoter dies, the estate will be made to pay back. It is different from individuals. That is why licensing of individuals is not fanciful to the Nigeria Customs Service and there is no way they can be looking at every Tom, Dick and Harry”, he said.
When asked if CEMA as it is today recognized the licensing of individual, he said,” Oh yes! There are three modes of licensing which WCO recommends; individual, corporate and self-clearance. If you have a company like PZ and others, you can give them a license, they operate a clearing department and they use their licenses to clear their goods.
“However, they have the corporate which we are used to here, I mean it is more convenient here, all you need is corporate registration. Nigeria cannot use individuals go to take money from the bank and run. The choice is for government because the Secretary of WCO says each country must determine the kind of customs administration it want to adopt”, Shittu clarified.
It will be recalled that NAGAFF had earlier said that it would push for the repeal of sections 153, 154 and 156 of the CEMA which deals with the licensing regulations of the customs and which empowers the service to license corporate bodies rather than individual.
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