Port Reform Committee Invites EFCC Into Ports

The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has disclosed that its operatives will as from today, Monday, December 10, 2012, commence undercover operations at the nation’s ports as part of efforts aimed at sanitizing port operations.
This hint was dropped by the Executive Chairman of the anti-graft agency; Mr. Ibrahim Lamorde when he received the Special Adviser to the President on Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Professor Sylvester Monye, who also doubles as the chairman, Port Reform Implementation Committee on Friday at the EFCC headquarters in Abuja.
Prof. Monye had informed the EFCC Chairman that he had come to seek the commission’s assistance in tackling some of the challenges undermining the port reform efforts. He noted that certain individuals and agencies of government are deliberately thwarting the efforts of government at sanitizing the nation’s ports.
Specifically, he told the EFCC boss that, “we have situations where agencies of government deliberately mount obstacles for them to generate pecuniary benefits for themselves. The idea is that the more delay you have, the more likely people pay up.”
He further disclosed that the Port Reform Committee is poised to remove all obstacles in the way of efficient clearing process at the ports.
Underscoring the rationale behind the EFFC invitation, Monye said :“The reason why we are bringing EFCC into the whole thing is that these agencies are part of the problem. Where you have agencies of government constituting themselves into bottlenecks, we need to remove these bottlenecks’’, he declared.
And in a quick response to the invitation, Lamorde told his guest that: “I assure you that we all understand the importance of the Maritime industry in Nigeria, and we will do everything possible to make sure that the work you are doing is successful. In fact, we will start deploying our people to the ports from Monday to make sure that people that are not needed are removed”.