The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has described as out of the ordinary and improper the authorization of the Customs Strike Force by the Management of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to intervene at any point of cargo clearing process at the nation’s seaports and make seizure where necessary.
The National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche who disclosed this in an interview with Primetime Reporters in Lagos said that with the recent development, customs seemed not to have definite direction and it seemed not to have target on how to sanitize the clearance process at the nation’s seaports.
Uche informed that NAGAFF had been harping on the licensing regulation of the Service calling attention that there was need for a holistic cleansing so that the issue of non-compliance would be tackled headlong from the source.
According to him,” It appears that customs prefer the manipulation of the process, a situation where you skew the process in your favour in order for you to rake in revenue when you are supposed to be pushing to create an enabling environment. So, here you see the reverse is the case. We shouldn’t be talking of dispatching Strike Force at this stage of port reform which also has to do with customs modernization. The approach we are seeing now is quite undesirable; we shouldn’t be talking of use of Task Force though some are of the opinion that WCO do allow use of adhoc committee when there is infraction that is somehow peculiar to what is expected.
“The non-compliance in the context of the Nigerian international trade, I wouldn’t say it is something that is new, it has been lingering, it has been a recurring issue that all of us should have sit down to look at but right now, the way it is going, it appears that the uncertainty in the entire clearance chain keep favouring some groups”.
On whether or not the development was an indictment on the resident customs officers, the NAGAFF President said that he didn’t see it as a vote of no confidence on the officers working at the seaports even as he added that ordinarily, it should have been seen as such but for the fact that customs enjoyed duplication of functions as exemplified by multiple units created by the service.
“How can you explain a situation whereby you have CGC Strike Force, you have the Compliance Team, you have the Intelligence Team, you have the FOU and so on pursuing one cargo on one container placing alerts; CIU alerts, Valuation alert and so on because they don’t trust each other. And this kind of problem, if government is serious about or they are sensitive to this anomaly, it calls for total overhauling of the Nigeria Customs Service. It is a situation that tends to define any organization as not being coordinated.
“If leadership is their problem, let them look for leadership, if they are not well trained in terms of being professional in their approach to their job, this should be done because I remembered very vividly that during the time of Dikko, he was two times Vice President of WCO under Kunio Mikuriya as the Secretary General. That was an opportunity for the Nigeria Customs Service to attract WCO attention to help them in sanitizing the customs process here but nothing happened. So, it is a development that some of us in the system are not comfortable with right now”, he said.
Asked if they were doing anything to overturn the development, he replied,” Yes, we are making moves. Like the one we initiated, we thought we should have gone ahead to do a follow up, unfortunately, they come up with this arrangement meaning that it is possible that they were forced to withdraw the other team (Compliance Team). We are looking at customs going back to the drawing board, let them look for a standard, there should be a standard put in place after a good number of years of this customs reform. We should have been able to say this is what we have been able to achieve”.
He however said that going forward; he should expect that customs should meet the freight forwarders and shippers, so that in a situation that it doesn’t know what to do in terms of overhauling its entire system so that together with them, they would review the process of cargo clearance through NICIS II as according to him,” we were better off during the time of NICIS 2.7 and NICIS 3.0, you can be sure of when you start off the process of releasing cargo. You have the traders’ zone, you have the customs zone and all these while, the issue of non-compliance has been there”.
He continued,” So, cargo clearance procedure has been an issue in our ports and it has lingered, it is left for customs to go back and decide and make up their mind to put up structures in place so as to simplify the cargo clearance process. Bringing in draconian measures, setting up task forces, blocking highways, asking Strike Force to intervene in the port as if those customs officers there are not equally as trained as Strike Force staff they are sending, it is a kind of exposing their inefficiency. Customs should apply some restraints because some of these things do not speak well to investors coming into this country to invest.
“Until all of us sit down and interface to fashion out a definite process that must be followed so that when cargo is leaving the port, there won’t be any interference, this back and forth movement will continue”.
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