The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has lamented that value of good coming into the nation’s ports are high, stressing that such goods are being over-valued .
The National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche, who said this recently in Lagos when he led the association’s executives on a working visit to the Customs Area Controller in charge of the Murtala Muhammed International Airport (MMIA) in Ikeja; Comptroller Jane Shoboiki, also maintained that the situation has led to increase in cargo diversion to the neighbouring ports.
He also said that the bad ports access road is posing a serious security threat to the nation’s waterways even as he advised the government to suspend all the vessels coming to Nigerian seaports.
“Goods are being overvalued, customs valuation is getting higher and Nigeria is losing business. The cost of doing business in Nigeria now is so high that cargoes are being diverted daily. If you look at what is happening in Apapa today and politically if you look at the interest of our neighbouring ports, you will begin to see that even the security in our waterways, the high insecurity is being engineered by people”, he lamented.
“We want to suggest at this point that government should try to resolve the problem at the ports, the government should stop vessels coming to our ports because it is an eye-saw you can’t even access the ports for hours”, he pleaded.
Also speaking, Increase called for peace and synergy between the associations and the MMIA Customs boss even as he pleaded with the Comptroller to threat the members as her own brothers and sisters.
He urged Comptroller Shoboiki, to see everything that happened between her and the associations as a misnomer, assuring her that the association stands for peace.
“We have seen it, that what happened in the past is a misnomer ,we want it to be a bye gone, we want to build a new relationship, a sustainable relationship, it is the one that is existing between us and the Nigeria Customs, so that is the major purpose of our being here. In trying to sustain the advocacy role that we have been playing”
Why we brought our members here today is to assure you that NAGAFF is a peaceful association, we never intend to hurt anybody. So if there was any reason for us to misunderstand anybody in the past, the Founder of NAGAFF said I should let you know that we should put everything behind us that should take these members especially the chapter members as your own”
The NAGAFF boss, also said that there is a need for a symbiotic relationship between the command and the association, saying that it is the only way forward.
Discussion about this post