The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has condemned the Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs Service, Col Hameed Ali (rtd) over his alleged failure to carry out operational reforms in the Nigeria Customs Service.
The association also alleged that the customs CG has failed to act on the demands of the association when he visited the ANLCA national secretariat recently.
Speaking with Shipping Position Daily in Apapa, Vice Chairman of the Tin Can chapter of the association, Chief Michael Ossy said that Col Ali has failed to put a stop to the multiple alerts plaguing cargo clearance at the ports as he had promised the association.
He explained that other demands of ANLCA which the customs CG had promised to address includes; the activities of the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone "A' customs officers stopping already cleared containers on Lagos highways, and the lack of uniformed value for customs clearance.
Chief Ossy said: "The alert that we complained about, the CG have not done anything about it. Again the valuation we complained about is still there, we are demanding a uniformed value on cargoes at all the customs commands, this is what obtains in other countries"
"Today, the valuation you get at Tin Can Island Port is still different from what you get at Apapa"
"Also, the FOU is still everywhere stopping containers, when you have cleared your cargo out of the port, they would tell you that the value is wrong, so whereby the right place for us to collect value?" He said
Also speaking with our correspondent, Public Relations Officer of the chapter, Mr. Emmanuel Onyemelikwe urged the customs boss to carry out operational reform in the service saying that so far, he has only been carrying out manpower development.
Onyeme said "We are yet to see the reform in customs that has to do with the operational aspect of the port, what we are seeing now is the manpower"
"Two days after he left here (ANLCA Secretariat), what we saw was the transfer of 337 assistant controllers of customs. After this, what we saw again was this issue of promotion they came out on Monday"
"All that is manpower, in the operational aspect we are still expecting them to perform"
"The Kyoto convention is not being implemented here, we have different command with a different value, we have told the CG that we want uniformed value, this would go a long way to address corruption in the customs", he said.
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