Mr. Alloy Nze Igwe is the chairman of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) at the Muritala Mohammed International Airport (MMIA) before the recent election that brought him into office, he has been a member of ANLCA for a long time, he was a two-time Public Relations Officer of the chapter, from where he served as Vice Chairman and now he is seating as the Chairman of the chapter. He spoke with Shipping Position Daily correspondent DAPO OLAWUNI last week at his base at the airport and the moves by government to relocate agents from the environment. Enjoy excerpts.
Now that you have been elected chairman, what are the changes you intend to bring to this chapter?
The first thing I want to embark upon is reorientation of our members, if you agree with me, the perception of an average agent is taken in a wider society, people do not look well on an agent, and this to some extent has to do with carriage, that is the way we carry ourselves, it is not that an average agent is not well equipped or well educated, but sometimes, our carriage and presentation before the public has a lot to do with the way people take us or look at us, I must as a matter of necessity change that perception by making sure that we are involved in a lot of workshops that will reposition us and tell us who we are, we will get qualified resource persons that will come and talk to us for us to know exactly what we are, what we are doing, how to present ourselves for the public to accept us, this is very important, from here a whole lots of other things will follow. You know that air cargo is a very peculiar area, so our operations at the airport is quite different from the seaport, so other angle I want to reposition the association at the airport is to look at some policies of the government that does not favor air cargo, we will make representations, I mean proper representation to the government and its various agencies to reconsider policies as it affects air cargo.
What are those policies you intend to change?
For example, air cargo is purely an emergency cargo, it is a cargo that as the goods are coming in it is expected to leave immediately, and most of the cargoes coming here are cargoes that are perishables, so bureaucracies that will hamper the clearing process should be looked into, it is not all things that are containerized that can stay for months, these are some of the policies we will raise and make government realize that whatever that is attached to clearing processes at the seaport should be limited at the airport.
How is the relationship between ANLCA and the Airport Customs Command?
We are still new in office but I can tell you that since we came in we have been getting a robust relationship with the custom; I must confess that we are privileged to have some wonderful Customs Area Controllers, Edike just left us, and Edike is one man that if you get to know him he is a likable person, he is a man of God, I was privileged to work with him and within that few months I found him very worthy to work with, luckily enough, another sound and responsible officer; Mohammed Umar, former Controller of Apapa premier port is here now, from his track records he is a very experienced and responsible controller, and since he came in it has been almost the same thing with Edike, so we don’t have any problem with that.
How about your relationship with FAAN and the other stakeholders around the airport environment?
FAAN and custom agents at the airport, in the past I must confess was not on a very sound footing I must confess to you, this cat and mouse game has always been there, but since I came in, I sat down and looked at it that it cannot always be war-war, what you are going to the field to fight for, you can always seat at around table and get it settled, and this has been the approach I have taken for some time now, and as a matter of fact it is already yielding fruits because the management of FAAN are now listening, sometime last year, magnanimously they gave us a place where we can build an agent village, though my predecessors did not do anything there, but since a came in work has started on that particular piece of land, it is ongoing, and within some months now we will commission it. I think with this, FAAN has improved and our relationship with them has improved.
Is FAAN collaborating with you on the project or it is solely done by ANLCA?
It is solely done by the association; FAAN just gave us the place without any other contribution whatsoever.
Are you not concerned about the environment of the proposed land?
When you are requesting something from somebody you might not have any choice, to them they told us that within the terminal here they don’t have any other space to give us and that this is the only available place for now and since we have no choice we accepted it in good faith, as for whether hoodlums may disturb us at the place or not, the fears are there but I have made contact with the commissioner of police and he has promised to bring a police post there, that by the time we complete that place he will build a police post there and Nigerian police officers will be posted there, so let’s see how far.
How is the importation and clearing activities here compared to the seaport?
I do not want to make the comparison because it is very clear, the seaports cannot be compared to the airports, at the seaport web have volumes, but at the airport what we have here are fast cargoes and emergency cargoes, and looking at the freight involved, it is very expensive to freight through the airport than the seaport, the freight involved is not always encouraging for importers to use airport because of the freight involved and the duty payments, so there is no base for any comparism, the seaports are always booming than the airport.
What are the challenges involved with clearing goods at the airport?
As I have said earlier, there is bureaucracy in terms of proper documentation, running your SGD, getting proper release when you have cargoes that are expected not to stay up to twenty four hours, if you have course to go into documentation for two days, you will agree with me that it will affect the shelf life of the particular product, so in as much as we know that the customs are really trying to regularize documentation now, we still want government to consider air cargo, air cargo is suppose to be given a proper attention where more emphasis will be laid on documentation.
Do you support the extension of contract of the destination inspection agents?
To some of us who are professionals in this industry are always taken aback when government cannot put its foot down and do the proper thing, the Nigerian Customs Service has come a long way and we believe that if the customs are well equipped to handle this job, for me I don’t see the basis of us having this people in the first place not to talk of retaining them, there is no point for someone being in an office saddled with the responsibility of doing only the paper and administrative procedure of the job, what matters is the physical aspect of the job, what the inspection are doing is to look at the paper value without looking at the import itself, and you know the kind of people that we are in this country, government retaining them to me is unreasonable and I want to use this medium to tell the government that there is no basis for their retention, the earlier they allow the Nigerian Custom Service who are responsible for import and export services in this country to do their proper job the better for this country.
Here at the airport, how do you distinguish genuine agents from the other crowds milling around?
I understand what you mean; you must know that this is an airport, an international airport for that matter, we have a lot of agencies and stakeholders in the aviation industries, we have the airlines, we have the handlers, the clearing agents and to cap it all it is commercialized, we have a lot of banks based here, so the tendency of you seeing different kinds of people there, I won’t be surprised with what you are saying but we have a way of identifying our members, we have our data base, we know those who are suppose to be clearing agents, if there is any need for us to get across to them we do not have any problems with that, maybe by the time we finish our agent village everything will be easy.
This agents village, how soon will it be ready?
Tentatively in the next three months I think we will be moving in
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