Fraudsters have reportedly cloned the clearing license belonging to President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) and using same to clear vehicles illegally from one of the biggest vehicle terminal in Apapa, PTML terminal.
Public Relations Officer of ANLCA at PTML Chapter, Mr Ayokunle Sulaimam equally confirmed to Shipping Position Daily that thirty five (35) members of the association died in year 2018.
He said the 35 customs brokers died due to bike accident on Apapa roads.
In addition, he confirmed that ten (10) members also lost their lives due to boat mishaps in 2018, bringing the total number of deceased customs brokers to 45.
He confirmed that with the introduction of the Nigerian Customs Integrated System (NICIS2) it would now be difficult to clear vehicles outside the customs system in what is generally referred to as 'Machine Outside'
"When we talk about documents covering vehicles that were smuggled from the land borders, we cannot rule out one or two at PTML port, the president of ANLCA took it up upon himself because even his own license was cloned and used to document some of these vehicles without his knowledge"
"Investigation has shown that some of the people that hang around the terminal have nothing to do at the terminal, they only come to cluster and all they do is to forge documents, they are not members of ANLCA"
"Customs at a time raided the area and this has reduced the practice" Ayokunle stated
The ANLCA spokesman highlighted some of the challenges confronting stakeholders at the terminal, describing them as enormous.
Among the challenges he mentioned is that vessels were berthing at PTML terminal without having the consignments discharged immediately, he lamented that it takes three days before the consignment would be discharged and moved to Mile 2 terminal.
"The NCIS 2 brought hiccups in clearance and RORO operations, Customs should give us a technical supervisor at the Mile 2 terminal that would take care of immediate problems of technical in nature. This would minimise the pace at which agents shuttle PTML Terminal and Mile 2 terminal just to solve a single problem"
"The statistics as we have as per vehicle importation is not so encouraging, the so called smugglers could be so determined to the extent that they go through the waterways. The smugglers have reduced opportunity for customs to increase its revenue" he said
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