FOU Customs Detains Clearing Agent For Assaulting Female Officer At PTML

A clearing agent whose identity was simply given as ‘big fish’ has been arrested by the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone ‘A’ of the Nigeria Customs Service for allegedly assaulting a female officer at the PTML Command of the service.
Shipping Position Daily gathered yesterday that the FOU personnel were‎ invited by the Controller of the PTML Command; Mrs Ronke Olubiyi to restore peace in the area.
Eye witnesses confirmed to our correspondent that the incident happened late last week at the vehicle seat of the command, stating that Mr. ‘Big Fish’ allegedly slapped the female officer (names withheld) for delaying his documents unnecessarily.
“He slapped the woman and even poured bottle water on her, we were there and saw it happened” a source confirmed to our correspondent.
Another eye witness account stated that, “the FOU officers fired gunshots into the air sporadically to scare away everyone when they came on Friday”
“The incident happened on Thursday actually, so on Friday when ‘Big Fish’ was coming, he came with his friends from Ajegunle, so the FOU officers had to fire shots because the boys were trying to prevent them from taking him away”.
Meanwhile, speaking with our correspondent on the matter, spokesperson for the PTML Customs Command, Mr. Steve Okonmah said that ‘big fish’ who claimed to be a clearing agent is not a clearing agent, but an impostor.
He said Big Fish does not have a clearance license, an identification card or an authority card all of which must be possessed by a genuine clearing agent. He said the arrested man was still cooling his feet at the FOU base in Ikeja.
‎Okonmah also confirmed to Shipping Position Daily that the various freight forwarding associations at the command have disowned the agent, saying that he is not one of their members.
“The agent misbehaved seriously, the service frowns at such behaviour, because it could disrupt the peace of an area, the best thing is for us to take him to the Federal Operations Unit”
“In the first place, he is not an agent, he has no license, he does not have any authority card, when you don’t have these things you are not an agent. He is still in FOU”
“The association has disclaimed him, they sent in a disclaimer” he said.
He restated the command’s commitment to crowd control and streamlining the number of clearing agents gaining access to the command daily.
He assured that the command is already working with various stakeholders at the command including the clearing agents in order to actualize this.
“We are looking into the crowd control, if we do it alone there would be cries, but if we collaborate with the associations, it would go smoothly. We even just finished a meeting on the planning of a way forward‎” he said.