The Nigeria Customs Service has said that it is experiencing challenges with its central server as regards operations of the Nigeria Customs Integrated System (NICIS) 2, even as the server has affected goods clearance from Apapa port, Tin Can port and KLT port.
Speaking at a round-table meeting organised by the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN) in Lagos yesterday, the Customs Area Controller in charge of Apapa command, Jibrin Musa lamented that it has been difficult to work since on Monday.
Jibrin who was represented by Yahaya Mukhtar; Officer in Charge of the Customs Processing Centre (CPC) in Apapa described the challenge as system errors experienced in the execution of the NICIS 2.
He called for stakeholders understanding of the situation, even as he called on importers to always make correct declarations. He said that wrong declaration and infractions if major cause of delay in cargo clearance.
"Since on Monday, we have not been able to access any work, importers have been able to capture any job, it means they have to start capturing tomorrow and taking deliver, it means another one day delay"
"We have held a meeting with the NICIS 2 team on some of the system errors, the NICIS 2 is a new platform and I am sure we would overcome it"
"Apapa command is not the pilot project, the NICIS 2 was kick-started at KLT command and later at Tin Can Customs, but it is getting better by the day, the challenges in Apapa is very little compared to those we experienced at Tin Can." he said.
Jibrin however assured that the server failures will not lead revenue losses for the command.
He said that at the moment, the Apapa port has only one scanning machine and that this is not adequate for the backlog of containers.
"The scanners are not working, and we have only one scanner that is working in Apapa, at Tin Can and other areas we do not even have any, but in Apapa we have one that is functioning"
"If you have a backlog of work, how many containers can pass the scanner? If every importer wants pass their containers through the scanning site it would not be obtainable because we have just one machine" he said
Discussion about this post