The Director-General of the Manufacturers’ Association of Nigeria (MAN), Mr. Segun Ajayi-Kadir has described as unfortunate development the ongoing probe of importers and manufacturers by the Nigerian senate over import infractions recorded in the country in the last ten years.
Kadir who said this in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos explained that the development was unfortunate because there were statutory agencies of government that were saddled with the responsibility of superintending the activities in the ports.
He added that the probe had further proven to be unnecessary since neither the Nigeria Customs Service not the Federal Inland Revenue Service had told the government that anybody had stolen something even as he argued that if one has any proof; such a person should ask the customs or the FIRS to investigate.
He said,” We don’t question the right of the senate to have oversight function over anybody for that matter but what we are saying is that it has to be done with a lot of decorum. Our members are being humiliated; many of them have visited the National Assembly upwards of six, seven, eight, nine or ten times.
“In recent times, we saw that a senator storm the company of one of our members accompanied with armed people and the media to harass a company that is doing legitimate business of assembling and publishing in the newspapers that the company is not into the business of manufacturing. I have even visited the company myself and I know them as our member. Probably, it may not be out of any malice but it could be absence of the right information that led to that exercise”.
He therefore called for proper delineation of duty so that even when people were called to question, it would be a one off thing.
“And you don’t need to require the CEO of the company to be there. If the line officer who is responsible for it is there, I mean he should be able to provide information and be allowed to go. And you should know that these things are very expensive, flying up and down, you have to be assembling papers, in some cases people are bound to make tonnes and tonnes of photocopies, even engaging people to do that and there is no provision in law for more than ten years, going back to more than ten years.
“So, I mean it is a very negative thing and it sends wrong signals to would be investors and can bring a lot of disillusion to existing manufacturers”, he added.
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