The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) last week flagged-off training of its members on the Nigerian Integrated Customs Information System (NICIS Version 2), at its ‘Dikko Inde House’ National Secretariat, along Durbar Road, Amuwo Odofin. Lagos.
The training session was kicked-off by the National President of ANLCA; Iju Tony Nwabunike, who pleaded with those who found time, in spite of their tight schedule and the traffic situation to attend, that they should take maximum advantage of the training to improve on their capacity to deliver optimally on their jobs.
The training consultant; Mr. Adeniyi took members through the processes of obtaining Username and Password for current Customs licenses, to enable interfacing with NICIS 2.
Using the National Secretary’s (Alhaji Mukaila Abdulazeez) agency as a sample-guide, the consultant took participants through every step of data capturing-to-printing out an Assessment Notice and managing documentary discrepancies.
Putting their experiences on the job and the exposition of the details of operating NICIS 2 into consideration, the excited participants engaged the consultant in what turned out to be an interesting interactive, which led to ANLCA members figuring out the challenges/loopholes in the designing of the NICIS 2 platform.
While the consultant advised participants who operate their Customs licenses with the Username and password (on www.trade.gov.ng website) to always ensure daily monitoring of activities on their licenses with their smart phones, laptops, ipads participants figured that the ICT unit of Nigeria Customs service should do more, to enhance the security of Customs licenses.
Some of the proffered solutions to the noticed lapses are: (i) Setting up an Alert system (sms and email) on every license, such that any transaction on the Customs license, triggers an alert to the phone number and registered/preferred email address, just as Banks send alerts whenever any transaction takes place on one’s account.
(ii) Another area that deserves enhancement is the unification of the Username and Password to be same for all commands, instead of different set for each command across Nigeria, since Customs issued licenses covers operations in all commands across the Nation.
(iii) The inability to continue the delivery process of an ongoing job, once a license runs into problem, is viewed by participants as a major snag considering the fact that with NICIS 2, the license cannot be switched to another one, once an initial one has been used to data capture and commenced clearing process. NICIS 2 is designed to ensure that until the problem is solved and the license unblocked, that job suffers stoppage.
Participants feel that there is a need to find a means of dealing with the problem while the job suffers minimum or no delay, in the spirit of trade facilitation.
The beauty of NICIS 2 is that owners of Customs licenses can view the statuses of their jobs as it progresses but do not have access to the platform solely operated by Nigeria Customs service. That, for sure, is for their own security purposes.
One other good thing learnt from the consultant is doing due diligence on each job by studying the online Bill of lading history against the Ship manifest entries, to be sure of the consistencies of the attached documents and the PAAR, as issued by Nigeria Customs Service.
Furthermore, ANLCA suggests that to secure Customs licenses from hackers, provision should be made for the use of embossing machines of the corporate licensed Agency, on the Assessment Notice or even incorporating facial or fingerprints, as part of accessing each of the licenses.
At the end of the session, participants were so delighted that calls for the continuing of the training were made. The National President – Iju Tony Nwabunike joined in demanding a recall of the consultant to train more members to which the National Secretary, who has been a partner to the consultant, concurred.
The National Secretary, who had the advantage of working closely with the immediate past National President – Prince Olayiwola Shittu, on this NICIS and other ICT challenges at Customs headquarters promised to handover certificates of earlier trainings conducted at the Secretariat to participants soon. He promised to send an sms notification very soon to that effect. This was welcomed with applause.
By Adumaza Joe Sanni
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