Despite the acclaimed success recorded by Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) of the Nigeria Customs Service, a group known as 'Concerned Freight Forwarders Group' has said that it is dragging the management of the Customs to court for allegedly defrauding Nigerians with PAAR.
The group also described PAAR as a monumental failure and a total fraud because it has failed to meet stakeholders’ expectations, more so when customs described it as a non-final document for cargo clearance.
Despite the acclaimed success recorded by Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) of the Nigeria Customs Service, a group known as 'Concerned Freight Forwarders Group' has said that it is dragging the management of the Customs to court for allegedly defrauding Nigerians with PAAR.
The group also described PAAR as a monumental failure and a total fraud because it has failed to meet stakeholders’ expectations, more so when customs described it as a non-final document for cargo clearance.
Speaking with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, image maker of the group, Mr. Segun Musa alleged that PAAR is an illegal document and any moment from now, freight forwarders will be going to court to challenge the authenticity of the PAAR.
He observed that the PAAR regime has not offered anything better than the Risk Assessment Report (RAR) formerly operated by service providers, and yet customs is collecting 1% Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme (CISS)
According to him, it is the same thing that the RAR was offering that the PAAR is now doing and that even under RAR, the service providers were unable to provide thousands of employment for Nigerians, which customs does not have.
He noted that the destination inspection agents were even paying staff salaries based on the 1% FOB on every import.
"Now what is the money meant for? It is criminal, customs must account for all the 1% FOB they have collected from the beginning of PAAR regime"
"When Customs came up with the PAAR regime, we were made to understand that the need for PAAR was because RAR was just an advisory note which is being manipulated by service providers, and operators needed an indigenous tool that will save cost"
"Unfortunately, what we are having presently is even worse than RAR in the sense that, if customs has been saddled with the responsibility of handling PAAR and at the same time they still query the PAAR, then the essence of PAAR has been defeated"
He said that customs had promised that there will not be any need to query the PAAR once it is issued and the issue of value will be a thing of the past. "What we have now is that every PAAR generated by customs are being queried"
Segun Musa argued that the Federal Government cannot be in business and that Nigerians have a right to know how much has been generated so far.
"We will be in court, we want to challenge the authenticity of this illegal collection, because we are aware that government is still funding the customs, so why must they collect extra charges which is not appropriated"
Musa said that there is need for government to allow freight forwarders collect customs duties as it is done all over the world, so that a percent of the money is given back to the freight forwarder. He said that this will bring down corruption at the port and encourage frieght forwarders to collect more.
Speaking on the activities of the 'Concerned Freight Forwarders Group, he said "the group is about 5,000 members that cuts across all the association's; NAGAFF, ANLCA, AREFFN and others, they are all members of this group".
Discussion about this post