The Chairman, Association of Igbo Maritime Practitioners in Nigeria (ASIMPIN), PTML chapter, Mr. Uchechukwu Aniezechukwu has described the proposed ban on importation of vehicles through the land borders with effect from January 1, 2017 by the Federal government as a noble decision.
Aniezechukwu who made this known in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos however said that the decision would remain a noble one as far as government was able to put security check on the nation’s porous borders failing which it would be endangering the lives of the security personnel.
“You know that our borders are porous, if we didn’t succeed in checkmating our borders, what we have succeed in doing is to empower smugglers and put the lives of the security personnel at the borders in danger because obviously, the smugglers will see Tokunbo as a big business and they will strive all they could to improve on their strategies thereby putting the lives of the security personnel in danger. I agree with the federal government”, he said.
When asked his position on the plight of the freight forwarders at the border posts whose jobs may be affected by this ban, he said,”My position has always been that the beauty of freight logistics is versatility, the ability to be versatile in the operation makes you a core professional. You do not operate only from the border angle, you do not operate only from air angle, you do not operate only from even the port angle. I will not call myself a complete logistics provider if I do not have the ability to do political logistics, military logistics, oil and gas logistics and freight logistics.
“So, if a certain class of people consign themselves only to the borderline and once policy changes , they begin to cry foul for their own personal interests, I do not think it is something to go by. Come to think of it, is it only vehicles that come in through the borderline? And I ask you again, is it only vehicles and rice that come in through the borders? Electronics come in through the borders, spare parts come through the borders among other general goods”.
He however called on the federal government to designate the borders for a particular line of trade so that it would be known to everybody that those line trade come un through the land borders especially where the government thinks it had comparative advantage over her neighbors.
He dispel the insinuations in some quarters that the ban if enforced would lead to congestion at the ports adding that it was not only vehicles that bring about congestion at the ports more so as the volume of imports at the nation’s seaports had dropped tremendously by 50%.
According to him,”This is the last quarter of the year, everybody in the port industry knows that the last quarter of the year is usually when good are freighted into the country on a bulky basis. If you go into the ports now, you will find out that it is not what it used to be. What does that tells you? That the inflow of cargo has dropped and government policy is looking at avenues through which they will generate revenue. What is uppermost to the government is how to generate fund.
“Government is looking at it from the angle of instead of leakages at the borders, let is bring them to the ports where they have comparative advantage. The framers of that policy is looking at it that they have more avenues of getting more revenue from the ports than they would get from the borders and that was why they placed the ban. I don’t think anything is wrong with that and I strongly believe that instead congestion, what it will do is to augment the loss of revenue or the inflow of cargoes that have dropped tremendously in the 2015/2016 trade year”.
On the grace period given by the government before the coming into effect of the ban, he insisted that government had a listening ear, that if the stakeholders would channel their argument well to the appropriate authority, the government may as well reconsider its position and extend the period given as according to him,”deadlines had been extended severally, so, what stops the government from extending this one if there are genuine cases?”
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