NAGAFF Urges Customs To Curtail Hacking

The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has appealed to the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to curtail the incidence of hacking into its website.
The founder of NAGAFF Dr Boniface Aniebonam told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the issue of hacking had been a long standing problem with the service.

The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) has appealed to the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to curtail the incidence of hacking into its website.
The founder of NAGAFF Dr Boniface Aniebonam told the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos that the issue of hacking had been a long standing problem with the service.
 “Just like I always try to say that fighting corruption in Nigeria must be holistic in the sense that government must observe all the laws of the land and make sure that they are enforced”, he stated, adding that, “the problem about corruption is that, this issue of harking, is a criminal act, somebody trying to do things in a manner that is against the law.”
 
 He said that the customs service has been complaining about losing revenue to the incidence.
The association chief said that the issue of hacking into the Customs website, in order to avoid payment of customs duties, was not a disincentive to the freight forwarders who were carrying out their business legally.
He, however, urged the service to be proactive and evolve measures that would ensure an alert system.
Aniebopnam said that the officers and men of the Customs must also be careful to protect their password.
However, when confronted with the issue, the Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Apapa Customs Service, Mr Timi Bomodi, denied any incidence of hacking into the service’s website.
 “There is nothing like that, we don’t have any problem of hacking in Apapa.”
 He said that the service was not losing revenue due to the incidence of hacking in anyway.
 “There are other factors affecting the collection of revenue but definitely not hacking.’’
 The PRO added that other issue which could affect the amount of money collected by the service was the level of importation.
According to him, if the level of importation is high, the income generated by the customs service will also be high and vice versa.
Bomodi noted that the nature of imports could also affect the revenue collection, saying that if what people import have a lower import duty then, lower duties would be collected.