Factional President of National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents (NCMDLCA; Mr. Lucky Amiwero has called on the Federal Government to set up an audit committee to look into the current state of scanners at Nigerian ports.
Amiwero who was speaking at a training programme for maritime journalists in Lagos on Wednesday advised that there was no need for the government to waste huge amount of money to purchase new scanners. He insisted that the scanners at the ports are one of the best in the world and what is required is for them to be fixed.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that none of the scanning machines at the various Nigerian ports are currently working.
But speaking at the event, Amiwero said: "You don’t just sit down and say the scanners are bad, who gave you the impression that they are bad? what the government is supposed to have done is to set up a committee of experts, they should pick people who are in the customs reform committee, they would now invite the company abroad to come over and carry out an audit of the scanners, they find out the level of the scanners and replace what is missing there and it would start to work"
"The scanners we have here are not old scanners, there was a report on these scanners which is supposed to be received and investigated by customs", he added.
He maintained that the scanners at the ports were acquired by destination inspection service providers on a Build Own and Transfer (BOT) basis and that the service providers have fulfilled their own aspect of the contract.
He however said that Nigeria Customs Service failed to carry out its own aspect of the contract and this is why the scanners are presently in a bad shape.
Amiwero noted that the Nigeria Customs under Inde Dikko Abdullahi had taken over the scanners from the service providers in a hurry, he said that a transition committee was supposed to have been set up to operate for six months and receive a report of an audit of the scanners from the service providers.
"They are supposed to sit for six months and study it, but they did not follow the process of taking over, instead of setting up a transition committee, customs had set up an implementation committee"
"Other countries are still using scanners of fourteen years old, but ours is even a modern scanner"
"The scanners are necessary to check influx of ammunitions into this country, the ammunitions in this country alone can sink Africa and this is because of our import procedure, we need to change our import procedure" he said.
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