The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has advised that instead of allowing some seized new vehicles to be rusting away at customs warehouses, some of the vehicles can be taken over by the government for official use.
The Director-General of LCCI, Mr. Muda Yusuf said this last week in a chat with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos.
He also said that instead of government making an extra budget for the procurement of vehicles for official purposes, some of these new vehicles can be given to the government agencies, thereby saving the money that can be used to procure them.
Yusuf also said that apart from the e-auction platform introduced by the Service, another way of disposing of some of these vehicles is by using them as government official vehicles; even as he added that the procedure for the auctioning must be transparent irrespective of how new or old the vehicle is.
“The customs have a way of disposing of seized vehicles, I think they normally auction and if they want to auction they do that in a very transparent way. Whatever they seized, there must be a procedure of how to dispose of them and the procedure must be very transparent and adhered to irrespective of whether it is a new or old vehicle”
“What is important is the integrity of the person that is purchasing them. Since the vehicles have been seized and aside from the auctioning, I think the government normally budget for vehicles and if there is a budget for vehicles, rather than using government money to buy some of these vehicles, some of these seized vehicles can also be allocated for government functions rather than making another budget to buy vehicles for government operations. I think that is one way some of the seized vehicles can be disposed instead of them rotting away there”, he suggested.
He also lauded that government decision to ban the importation of trucks above 10 years starting from 2020 explaining that it is a welcomed development as it will help to address the issue of constant accidents on the roads.
“On the issue of banning old trucks, I think it is a good idea, you cannot be allowing old trucks to be coming into the country. Look at the type of damage they are doing to us and how all sorts of trucks are coming into the country. We have recorded a lot of accidents because of the old trucks and they have also been causing troubles and all that. So it is a good idea at least to limit the age of vehicles coming in here. I think we have a similar policy on vehicles and I think it should be extended to trucks”, he concluded.
Discussion about this post