An exporter; Captain John Okakpu has explained that discrepancies on the Customs duty payable on vehicles coming into the country through different port is one of the reasons vehicle importers prefer hardly Lagos ports.
Okakpu who gave this explanation recently in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos also queried the why Calabar port is not functioning enough as to be able to be servicing neighboring countries like Cameroun, adding that under normal condition it should be able to be servicing other countries.
He said that a car that might cost about N500,000 to clear in Lagos ports will cost over N1million to clear the same model of car in Onne or Warri ports.
“I was in a programme one day when a clearing agent dropped one bomb, it was like a bomb. He said we have Calabar, Onne and Warri ports, why it is that Calabar not servicing Chad and other places and why Ghana is improving in terms of technologies and all that.
“Now, let me give you an instance, if you bring a Toyota Camry of say 2002-2003 to Lagos ports, it might cost you about N500,000 or less to clear it, but if you take the same car to Onne or Warri port it will cost you N1.5million ” he said.
Okakpu however said that under normal circumstances people will like to take their vehicles to a port that are cheaper and that is why those ports are getting low patronage, especially in vehicle importation.
“So people will start taking it where it is cheaper for them because most of the regulatory bodies are not in those ports; whether it is a deliberate act or not, I don’t know”
“Because I cant see the why somebody who has to send his car to Ogoja will send his container to Lagos. So, these are part of the issues we are dealing with in our country today, we need to open up Nigeria because people who are in Niger are supposed to be suing Nigerian ports”, he explained.
He maintained that the country is losing lot of money due to inefficiency of those ports especially in handling vehicles.
“Even if it is container of vehicles do you know how many of those are supposed to be entering into Nigeria and that is what we are losing to them. So if it going to cost say N200,000 to clear a vehicle in Lagos, it is supposed to cost the same amount anywhere else in Nigeria. But if it cost N200,000 and it costs more than that elsewhere, then there must be a conspiracy going on. So we need to tell ourselves the truth, so that we can get out of the wood”, he concluded.
Discussion about this post