Clearing agents in the nation's maritime sector have lamented that their jobs have been taken over by serving and retired customs officers.
Speaking with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos recently , Chairman of International Freight Forwarders Association (IFFA) tasked Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) to make use of his investigative skills and manpower to ensure that serving customs officers who are running clearing and forwarding licenses are fished out and dealt with.
Akintoye noted that due to fear of intimidation, agents cannot on their own give out the names of the guilty officers engaging in cargo clearing, he also urged the CG of Customs to make use of the Customs Intelligence Unit (CIU)
According to him, despite the fact that clearing agents are the ones that collect revenue from their clients to Customs, they are not being regarded or respected. He said agents are like a goat in the hands of the lion.
"The dangerous aspect of it now is that all our jobs have now gone into the hands of the Customs, both serving and retired, go and check the list of licenses in operation and those that are effective, you will find out that it has the hands of a customs officer in it"
"Ali has failed to do anything in this regard, rather he is expecting us to mention names so that at the end of the day they would now block our licenses from operating, such would never happen because nobody wants to risk his source of livelihood"
"Meanwhile he has his own investigating arm like the CIU that he can deploy to get these facts"
"But if we are pushed to the wall, we would not mind"
"My advice to the CGC is that he should develop the proper orientation within the Nigeria Customs Service to let them know that if you are employed as a customs officer, please do your job and forget about clearing, if you want to be a clearing agents, you must drop the uniform"
"The customs officers that retired either as a controller or deputy Controller, they are all in our field of practice today, and whenever they are introducing themselves they still call themselves a customs officer, they would not even say they are retired, they are using this to intimidate the agents"
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