The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has charged it's members to reject bill of laden on containers laden with Tramadol drugs.
The association gave the directive yesterday when its national executive management led by Hon Tony Iju Nwabunike celebrated its 360 days in office at an appraisal meeting.
Speaking at a meeting to mark the event yesterday at the National Secretariat in Festac Town Lagos, Nwabunike assured that the next three years of the executive shall usher-in various reforms and the achievement of the four cardinal points of his administration.
Nwabunike also assured that ANLCA is ready to collaborate more with the various government agencies operating at the port to ensure that the various challenges confronting custom brokers at the port is revolved.
He also said "Today, i am in your midst to tell you that 365 days is gone, we still have three more years to go, and it is going to be a very vibrant three more years, together we are going to work as one big family"
"Together we are going to make sure that our operational challenges are solved, we would get government collaboration to ease the businesses of our members"
He urged members to always act according to the constitution of ANLCA which he said is supreme.
"We don't have to do things in the old order, when you do things and think you can go away with it, we would say no to it" he said
Nwabunike also assured that the administration is ready to accept genuine advise that would bring peace to the association.
Meanwhile, the association has said that for its members to be patriotic, they must not be part of agents that would facilitate clearance of Tramadol cargo.
Speaking on the need for compliance, the Vice President of ANLCA, Dr. Kayode Farinto said that to clear a container of Tramadol now is N280million while the value of a container of Tramadol is now N1billion.
"In the North now, from my investigation, we noticed that there is no house that does not have a psychopathic child, so we need to be up and doing, to be good Nigerians, if they give you Bill of Laden on Tramadol, please say no to it"
"If you clear Tramadol and you make money, the law of Karma is there, whether you like it or not, your son would come and consume from it, let us say no to facilitation of bad goods at our port"
Farinto said that some of the challenges experienced by the executives in the last one year includes; the benchmarking of cargoes at the Tin Can Island command as well as the random stoppage of already cleared cargoes by customs units mounted on Mile 2 expressway and Ijora area of Apapa.
"There is no law that allows the Controller to benchmark N1.2million for forty foot and N600,000 for twenty foot containers, we were able to stop this at Tin Can Port"
"Before we came onboard, maritime police were stopping cargoes unnecessarily, but now they can no longer do this except in collaboration with Shippers Council" he said.
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