Scores of placard-carrying licensed customs agents yesterday accused one of the nation’s private terminal operators; APM Terminal of deliberately starving Lilypond Container terminal in Ijora, Lagos of containers.
The apparently frustrated clearing agents stormed the dedicated container facilities peacefully early yesterday with placards bearing different messages, all of which decried the current plight of the once-thriving terminal.
Scores of placard-carrying licensed customs agents yesterday accused one of the nation’s private terminal operators; APM Terminal of deliberately starving Lilypond Container terminal in Ijora, Lagos of containers.
The apparently frustrated clearing agents stormed the dedicated container facilities peacefully early yesterday with placards bearing different messages, all of which decried the current plight of the once-thriving terminal.
They specifically accused APM Terminal which operates the container terminal in Apapa port of deliberately refusing to stem vessels to Lilypond in preference for the APM Terminal’s Apapa port facilities. According to them, while there are too many containers and attendant delays in Apapa, the Lilypond, Ijora facilities is empty.
The messages on the placards included:
Led by a former chairman of the Lilypond chapter of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Ignatius Nwachukwu, the protesting agents appealed to the Federal Government to come to their rescue, even as they accused APM Terminal of deliberately wanting to kill the terminal in Ijora.
According to him, “AP Moller has even started frustrating the stakeholders, operatives, customs officers in this command, they have stopped stemming vessels in this command and we are asking why, why are we being starved, why are we being deprived of our rights?
“There are about ,5000 people operating in this command and they are being deprived of their duties, official assignments, now why would you chase about 5000 people out of this place all because you want to make this place an empty command, we are saying that the empty container depot in this place cannot give us business”, he continued.
“Therefore we are saying that the federal government that has given the monopoly to take vessels to all the commands and terminals should revoke it since it is improper for a foreigner to come and share food for us in our own country”.
Also speaking on the plight of Lilypond and the agents who work there, a chieftain of ANLCA, Chief Voe Assim regretted that since APM Terminal stopped stemming containers to the Ijora terminal, “we have lost lives, our workers would have to leave their houses as early as 3a.m, some of them have ended their lives on the road to work, and report at Apapa at 5 a.mto pick tickets for the booking of tickets for examination of customs function, and at the end of the day they give you seven days, sometimes 10 days and you will be surprised you come back at the end of the ten days, the containers won’t be on ground, and you will have to start the processing all over again and the containers are supposed to leave the port within seven days of its arrival, you will be surprised that for one month, they are still fighting to remove the containers from berth”.
Apparently angry with the terminal operator, Assim, asked: Why is it that in Nigeria we open- handedly receive people that were being driven from Ghana and South Africa for destroying their economy, we are saying we don’t want AP Moller, let them leave Lily pond alone, let them give us our containers”.
He appealed to the Federal Government to probe the activities of the terminal operator; especially as it concerns Lilypond Container Terminal in Ijora.
Discussion about this post