The National Secretary of the Association of Registered Freight Forwarders Nigeria, AREFFN, Ichie Frank Obiekezie has blamed the rising incidences of importation of illicit goods through the Nigerian ports on collaboration among some dubious importers, freight forwarders and releasing officers of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS who are bent on sabotaging the nation for their personal gains.
Speaking in a chat with our correspondent in Lagos recently, Obiekezie also blamed the upsurge on ignorance on the part of some importers whom he said could collaborate with the exporters to manipulate the expiry dates on pharmaceuticals and food items in order to deceive innocent Nigerians into believing that those items were still valid and healthy for consumption.
His words, “Sometimes, most of these illicit imports are not done without the collaboration among the importer, the dubious freight forwarder and a dubious customs officer. If such things are discovered, there’s a need for investigation, investigation will unravel the culpability or otherwise of these individuals.
“In some cases, the freight forwarder may know ahead, that’s why he will direct the importer to ensure that he shipped the consignment to a particular port. But in some cases, some importers play smart, he will tell the agent, it’s either the agent refuses or he will charge him more money. He will tell you the other agent was doing it before only that the other time, he delayed, so I decided to change him. He will give you that fake information and because everybody wants to get a job, he grabs it.
“In such a case, if such a thing is discovered and at the end of the day, you find out that the agent is not aware of it, you let him go. If you are part of the deal abinitio, and it backfires, all of you will go in for it including the customs officer because you here now talking about the agent, most of the times, you see these things arrested but you will never hear about the customs officer that released it, because without that releasing officer, not even one person, the AC will release, the DC stamps, it will come to the gate and so on.
“But come to think of it, there’s hardly any import that an importer engages in with the freight forwarders that doesn’t have prior discussion with the officers that will handle it. That’s why sometimes, you see some importers and their agents insisting that a particular consignment must be channeled to a particular terminal or port.
“There’s no sane human being, unless a mad man will bring a consignment that he knows is offensive and drop it for examination if he had not gotten prior assurance that it could be handled.
“Some bad eggs among them (regulatory agencies) still collude with bad importers and bad freight forwarders because there’s no reason you should know that a particular food item or drug is expired, and anybody who consumes it is subject to die and you go and bring it because of money, you are indirectly killing people.
“So, if you are caught and tried for murder, the authorities might not be far from being in order because that is the rule. But the bottom line is, don’t give people the reason to tend towards evil because people must eat and people must take drugs.”
On why there’s hardly any arrest of suspects in connection with most of these illicit goods intercepted by the customs at the nation’s seaports, he said, “It’s not only the customs, most of these regulatory agencies – NAFDAC, NDLEA, among others are culpable. There’s no way that a container is positioned at the port and some discrepancies are found, you cannot see the freight forwarder who positioned it, you cannot see the shipping company that brought it in because in any shipping company, the freight forwarder has authority, the same thing with the terminal.
“Every freight forwarder has authority and every freight forwarder knows the client he is working for because ordinarily, the freight forwarder will tell you he’s not the importer because the bill of lading says, “said to contain.”
“When you open a container and it contains items that are offensive, the simple thing is to get the freight forwarder to help the authorities to apprehend the importer. But sometimes, because of the way that they treat freight forwarders when such things happen, the freight forwarder may decide to save his head.
“But if in such cases such a thing happens, and the freight forwarder knows that they can only use him as a witness, why would he run? He will lead you to the importer. If he refuses, customs can trace its operation to a particular shipping company and the shipping company will know the importer and the freight forwarding company that applied for its release. And in that shipping company, every freight forwarder has authority to clear and that authority contains the particulars of that freight forwarder.
“But they must have to take the freight forwarder into confidence because the freight forwarder didn’t travel abroad to import. But when such things happen, they will just arraign the freight forwarder and behind the scenes, the importer will become air. So, these days, when they happen, if the freight forwarder has an opportunity, he will abandon the job and flee.
“The only thing he will lose is, if in the cause of taking up the job, he has committed his own money, because these days, most freight forwarders use their own money, otherwise, there must be a way of compensating him if this type of things are discovered and he is used as witness. If there’s a way of compensating the freight forwarder, he will fully cooperate.
“So, that they don’t arrest people, the people that can explain it are the people that are handling these incidents.”
Insisting that the importers of those seized goods were not engaging in that illicit trade for the first time, Obiekezie said, “Somebody will even tell you that the ones that they are parading are the ones that didn’t settle well, otherwise, how do you still see hard drugs in our market? How did they come in? If they have arrested these hard drugs and collected all those hard drugs, why do we still have them in our markets?
“Look, my brother, corruption has eaten deep into every facet of Nigerian society. There’s none of these things that pass from abroad to here, the majority of them are known to the regulatory authorities. If there’s a way of tracking the quantum of illicit things that leave Europe and China to come to Nigeria and then find out the quantity that has been intercepted, you will see that the quantity that has been intercepted is far less than what comes in because the greater part of it has gone into the market.”
On the way forward, he said, “There’s a need for sufficient information. Apart from the ones that the NAFDAC is doing, the officers in the port should also have a role in enlightening the users of the ports and everybody the list of goods not allowed into the country.”
Photo: Ichie Frank Obiekezie, National Secretary, AREFFN.
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