‘’Port Monitoring Committee should accommodate the sacked agencies in the ports or give order to the agencies to move closer to the port’’…Dr Aniebonam (NAGAFF Founder)
Dr Boniface Aniebonam is the proud founder of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF). Recently, he spoke to some journalists about the industry, freight forwarding and other sundry issues. Roland Ekama was there for Shipping Position Daily.
How Can You Describe The Present Condition Of Apapa Traffic?
Traffic within the port environment is hectic; it has not been easy entering and getting out of Apapa and Tin Can Island port respectively. However time is money, if we could not have access to the ports, I don’t know what we think we might be doing in a situation where the government is talking about 48- hour cargo clearance from the port. It is very important for the concerned authority to think of the possible way out of the present situation surrounding the port access roads, so as to ease the issue of traffic in Apapa because if we don’t do that, we will not be transforming progressively in port operations. There could be an expansion on the roads and I recalled that the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders [NAGAFF] has written several documents to the government even suggesting that we should have truck terminals and if we do have that, I don’t think we will have much problem about traffic in Apapa. What do we mean by truck terminals?, it is that we should have a holding bay for trucks where the operators of the trucks will be connected to the port operation and of course, the concessionaires should be able to know the number of containers that are able to load in a day and be able to know what number of trucks instead of everybody coming to the port at once which is not a very good arrangement because it’s important that we do something very urgent and of course, talking about traffic in our port, we cannot do much if we have not integrated the ports. Our ports need to be integrated for other transport system to come into play because the number of tankers and trucks coming into the port might not be necessary if the ports are properly linked with rail lines. We need to do that as fast as possible to link up the outer terminals even the inland container terminals with the rail lines from the port which I believe will help us a lot. The cargo traffic is increasing everyday and we need to move with time
What is Your Perception Of Port Concession?
The concessioning exercise by the government is to reduce cost of doing business in the port and possibly increase the efficiency and what are the yardstick to know that efficiency has increased at the port: you will be looking at container movement per hour, looking at the number of equipment that are available for operations and off course go on to take a look at the issue of personnel in terms of capacity building to what extent are freight forwarders properly positioned to address issue of cargo administration. So, an efficient port has to be cost effective and so can we now say that the port concessioning has actually yielded dividends ?The answer is no, because the cost of doing business in the Nigerian port is still very high especially when you look at the charges that we pay to the private concerns. It is expected that the first year of the concession there should have been a reduction of 30% in our expenses and these things are not helping and not bringing result. There is no doubt that there has been some level of infrastructural development in terms of cargo handling equipment because a lot of places are being restructured by the terminal operators, but that has not translated to reduced cost. The cost of doing business at the port is very high and I think we should do something as fast as possible in that regard.
What is Your Take On The Government Agencies That Were Sacked From The Seaport?
The government agencies in our ports is still an issue that we should all look at, yes we agree that the port monitoring committee has exercise some level of powers to eject some regulatory agencies from the ports, that is, agencies like NAFDAC, SON and others. We are most oblige to appreciate the effort of the federal government in that regard, but be that as it may, we need to make input to that regard because the primary responsibility of the government is to protect lives and properties and of course in doing that, there is need to look into certain areas like the roles and statutory functions of NAFDAC and SON. The word security is basically the protection of lives and properties .However it is not only when Boko Haram is prevented from attacking the crowd that we know that live is in danger, it is not only when we hear that people are been kidnapped that we say lives are in danger, it is not only when people are been robbed or mugged that we say that security is porous? The answer is no. We have full security and that means that the issue of standards comes to play. A lot of people have lost their lives through roads mishaps and that has to do with issues of substandard tyres which is under prohibition and you can see that they are inherent danger in that regard and if we do not take measures to ensure that such goods are not allowed to come into the country, then we will be creating a very serious security problem because we have seen issues of pharmaceutical products which are of substandard which affects our life. When you use products that are substandard, it cannot cure what your health requires, it is then important to note that the agencies have a statutory responsibility to play in the port. We can as well argue that these agencies do not have the pre requisite in terms of regulations and the laws permitting them to be at the port, in that regard if we will continue to talk about the issue of authority of these agencies to be in the port then we will be negating against the doctrine of necessity, especially the issue we are discussing about has to do with lives. Some of us will agree with me that one of the biggest problems today is that when you pick up a bulb and lit it, the next two minutes it goes off because these things are imported, so we need to make sure that the issue of standard is paramount so that we don’t lose our economy. In other words, I am trying to say that it appears that we enrich other nations and go hungry because Nigerians leave the country to go to other countries like China with our hard earn money ,pick up products ,come back home only to know that the products are fake and go back again ,therefore we continue to be poor. In other words, we need to have concern about our regulatory agencies because it is important. I could take you to the Customs and Excise Management Act ; section 13 which specifically made it a mandatory that the concessionaires or the Nigeria Port Authority have the responsibility to provide accommodation for the agencies of the government to perform their functions in the Customs port. Now, the demands that we have here is issue of convenience. We all know that NAFDAC has their office in Yaba and Oshodi ,we know that Standard Organization of Nigeria SON has it’s office somewhere in Lekki and we also know that the responsibility of these agencies have not been eroded or removed, so how do we now allow them to do their job? The regulatory agencies should be allowed to do their job in a most – friendly manner because the mandate is quite clea;r now that we need agencies at our port which is obvious customs and Nigeria Port Authority are lead agencies in the port with the NPA supervising the concessionaires as it were in the port, while customs has the role of revenue collection for the government which we all know and of course NIMASA is there .The issue is that the customs must be able to refer these agencies to the port as at when due so that there must be a volume of confident and I could take you right away that when you get into Apapa port, you will find a building by the right hand side that can warehouse or accommodate all the government agencies and I am saying this because we move cargoes in and out of the port which we know the difficulties our members are going through therefore if we are taking about 24hours or 48 hours cargo clearance from the seaport when there is a consignment that has to do with NAFDAC and SON ,then how long will it take customs to contact them from Lekki phase 1 and Yaba to perform their functions? so it is as good as saying that the port monitoring committee should move further to give a directive to accommodate these agencies or they should give order to the agencies to move closer to the port so that our members would have access to them immediately when their demand is required and I will give a very clear example the Nigeria Port Authority headquarters was moved from Abuja to Lagos you recalled and also the collecting banks that were mandated to collect customs duty ,those banks were mandated to relocate closer to the ports to enable these agencies to pay their money ,however we are on line now as we develop some of these issues globally and what again I am trying to sound as a note of warning is that these regulatory agencies is that many of them have started putting in remarks on the ship manifest therefore making it possible to have access to take delivery of their containers. The ASCUYDA system of the customs has interconnectivity whereby critical stakeholders can hook on it so NAFDAC and SON and any of them goes into the manifest and put a stop into the cargo therefore by the time it goes for release you cannot do that, meanwhile the container is lying in the port until you have finished with them so these are things we need to look out for because they are not helping the system. However our recommendation is quite obvious in that regard, thus we need to review the relevance of these agencies and all we are saying is that since their statutory responsibility is exact, we should work towards a forum of convenience so that we don’t waste precious time removing cargo out of the port.
How Can You Access CRFFN Following The Recent Induction of some Members of NAGAFF Into The Council?
NAGAFF is duly registered and as a big association, NAGAFF highly represent practitioners of the freight forwarding in Nigeria, we all know that an induction was conducted, a register for freight forwarders was created and properly documented and those people that their names appear there are now clearly marked freight forwarders of Nigeria and they are simply referred to as professional so that is a very good news to all of us that we have finally arrived as professionals in Nigeria and I also think that is the essence of the induction. We are no more touts as people used to call freight forwarders because by virtue of the regulation and the governing council of our great council is doing very thing possible which as a matter fact will be visiting us soon. Apart from that, we will be also prepare for their visit because it is a ‘’home coming’’ for the council because this is the home for freight forwarding in Nigeria and as a matter of fact the council started from this compound which we followed up to facilitate it and get it through the National Assembly.
In A Summary, Who Is A Freight Forwarders And Who Is A Clearing Agents?
A freight forwarder is a total logistician, that is, somebody who is involved in door to door service. A freight forwarder is that person who has the skill and knowledge to move cargoes from point of origin across international frontier to the final destination. That person has the authority, the power and the skills to coordinate all other actions that are required to make it possible for that cargo to move from point A to B in a most economic manner; that is, safety and reliability and the cost must be very competitive. So a freight forwarder is that one who is a natural person who can acquire skill and knowledge, that person is a member of NAGAFF. If you are not a freight forwarder, you are not a member of NAGAFF. That means you must be an individual who has knowledge and skill. Now if you go to a license customs agent where you have ANLCA and a license customs agent is a corporate person who is artificial in nature, involved in the carriage of goods and services in the locality .The locality is about the customs formalities and procedure. You can see now that a license customs clearing agent is an artificial person who has a duty as an agency worker with the customs and that corporate body has the responsibility to carry out functions in relation to customs formalities. In other words, a licensed customs clearing agent being a corporate body must be managed by a freight forwarder and you know that a freight forwarder is a natural person and not an artificial person who cannot acquire skill and knowledge, he cannot be referred as a professional. Aniebonam Nigeria Limited can never be a professional because it is artificial and a corporate body to be registered with the corporate affairs commission .He has no sense or knowledge about the job, so every licenses issued to the Nigerian license customs agents to carry out responsibilities of customs formalities must be manned and administer by a freight forwarder and that is a member of NAGAFF, every licenses issued by the Nigeria customs service must be managed and administer by a freight forwarder who is duly accredited into the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria. So what we have now are two legislative instruments which are the Customs and Excise Management Act [CEMA] on one hand which gave rise under section 39 of the Nigerian constitution for members of ANLCA as corporate entities to come together duly represented under the council to operate. So you can see that NAGAFF are total logistics manager and I will say that we are carrying out a revolution. NAGAFF is a revolutionary that is what I am trying to let you know and to also effect a change. In other words what I am discussing now is about Cabotage because it is only here in Nigeria that you see people from Benin Republic and Ghana that come to the country and get themselves involved with customs formalities, that is, carrying of cargoes in and out of the port, but right now if the ANLCA leadership and NAGAFF leadership will take advantage of these two legislative instruments, that is, the CRFFN Act and the CEMA; in diversity lays their strength.
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