… Introduces landing certificate to check container, vehicle flying
… Committee to submit report in one week
Following the recent picketing of the Clarion Bonded Terminal by the 100% Compliance Team of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) and his subsequent intervention, the Customs Area Controller, Tincan Island port command, Comptroller Adekunle Oloyede has set up a committee to investigate the circumstances surrounding the alleged missing containers.
Oloyede who disclosed this while fielding questions from journalists in Lagos today said that the 19 containers were allegedly missing as nobody could confirm that yet.
He recalled that when NAGAFF went to picket Clarion Bonded Terminal, the Chairman, Board of Trustees (BOT) of NAGAFF, Mr. Chidiebere Enelamah came to him and said that he was going to stop them from picketing Clarion and that they should write to him (Oloyede) so that they could investigate.
“I received their letter on Monday because I will not treat what is not official. When I got the letter on Monday, I set up a committee with the DC Admin as the Chairman. I have involved O/C Bond and even our legal adviser to look into this issue in one week and report back actually what happened to the 19 containers”, he said.
On allegation that the said 19 containers were carrying arms, he said, “nobody can say there are arms there. We know how to profile the exporter, we know how to profile the importer. We will go historical and from history, we will be able to know if the exporter or the importer are in that trade of arms. So, you have to give us time to officially look into this and get back to you.”
On allegation of incessant flying of containers in the command, Oloyede maintained that since he took over the leadership of the command, the management of the command had not heard any case of container flying.
He continued, “But about two weeks ago, we had intelligence that some of the transire on vehicles that I approved, some vehicles that were not supposed to be part of the list were input into the list and I can tell you, six of the vehicles are in the Enforcement (Unit).
“Of course, we got them out and I took them to Enforcement and because of that, I arranged a meeting between the Five Star Logistics, the two terminals operators: Clarion and Classic and we entered into another Standard Operating Procedures for transire whereby every transire must come with landing certificate. Without that landing certificate, after one or two weeks, I will not sign any other transire to those locations again. That is the Standard Operating Procedures which we agreed upon and to fine-tune this procedure, we are also having a meeting of all stakeholders before the end of this week so that we could look at issues.
“Yes, there could be issues but we are on top of it. That’s why we could take six exotic cars infused into one of the transire and the they are with us in the Enforcement Unit.”
Photo: Comptroller Adekunle Oloyede, Customs Area Controller, Tincan Island port command.
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