Ahead of the Nigeria Customs Service’s preparedness to takeover Destination Inspection from the three service providers in July, the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has advised the Customs to absorb Nigerian staffers of the service providers.
Ahead of the Nigeria Customs Service’s preparedness to takeover Destination Inspection from the three service providers in July, the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has advised the Customs to absorb Nigerian staffers of the service providers.
Addressing the media yesterday in Lagos, founder of the association, Dr Boniface Aniebonam stressed that the Nigerian Customs Service is ready to take-over their core functions as stated in the Customs and Excise Management Act, even as he said that the sensibility of Nigerians with regards to the contract terms of the service providers are being toiled with.
He said that the money given to the service providers can be transfer to the police pension fund adding that it is a colossal waste of money paid as commission to the service providers.
"Webb Fortane and SGS contract should be terminated and all the Nigerian staff should be absorbed by the Nigeria Customs Service", he posited.
"We must remark that it is a colossal waste the amount of money paid as commission to service providers who ordinarily maintain a staff strength of not more than 500 personnel ."
"It is a fact that they may not be picking anything less than N47 billion per annum, where as the Nigeria Customs Service with a staff strength of well over 19,000 personnel is left to manage and administer the core function of the service and its personnel within an average of N30 billion per annum".
Aniebonam noted that there is nothing difficult with customs examinations and that the scanners have not added any value to port operations.
According to him, scanners at the port cannot work on 80 containers per day adding that operators of Pre Shipment Inspection are the same people who are involved in destination inspection.
The frontline freight forwarder advised that "Globalscan, as an indigenous service provider and COTECNA should approach Nigeria Customs Service to handle external services to cargo tracking for the purpose of security concern of Nigeria bound import ".
He also recommended that Customs should be granted 5 per cent of the Freight On Board (FOB) value of import into Nigeria, pointing out that it should be able to engage expert handlers for the operation and maintenance of the scanner equipment.
The NAGAFF founder reiterated in the area of security, government should re introduce pre- shipment inspection regime because the process will save cost and ensure adequate security to the port facilities, cargo and Nigerians.
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