Apparently worried by soaring corruption and sharp practices in the nation’s ports, industry watchdog; the Port Industry Anti-Corruption Standing Committee (PIACSC) said that it has changed its strategy and approach in tackling the menace of corruption even as it vowed that it would no longer be business as usual in the fight against corruption in the port system.
The committee lamented that despite all the measures that have so far been put in place in conjunction with the Independent and Corrupt Practices Commission (ICPC) as well as other relevant anti-graft agencies at the port, corrupt and sharp practices still persist in the ports.
In a meeting with the Anti Corruption and Transparency Unit (ACTU) of the various government agencies operating in the port last week in Lagos, the Coordinator of the PIACSC, Mrs. Enoche Ogenyi alleged that many of the government agencies have neglected the agreed guidelines on joint cargo examination, even as she lamented that there are still multiple points of documentation in the clearance process.
At the meeting, she berated some of the ACTU members of the government agencies operating around the port saying that they have neither been up to date nor forth-coming with their quarterly reports to the committee and the ICPC to work with.
Mrs Ogenyi also said that while the port is regarded as the gateway to the nation’s economy, it is still the most corrupt system in the country, just as she identified some of the persistent problem as “cumbersome and multiple points of documentation at the port, usage of fake clearing documents, concealment, over or under invoicing, short payment of customs duty and port charges”.
She also stressed that “there is still touting among unlicensed and fake freight forwarders as well as multiple checkpoints even after a consignment has left the ports.”
At the end of the meeting, the committee agreed that henceforth there should be joint inspection of cargoes by all the relevant agencies at the port including SON,NAFDAC, NDLEA, Nigeria Customs Service, SSS and so on, and that there will also be shared intelligence among the agencies.
The committee also agreed to form a pact which will ensure that they are more alive in the ports through constant patrol and on-the-spot assessments.
However, the committee pointed out that most of the scanning machines in the ports are not working effectively and advised that ‘fast- tracking’ of cargoes out of the ports must no longer be encouraged.
Speaking earlier, the chairman of ICPC, Hon. Justice Emmanuel Ayoola (Rtd.) who was represented at the meeting by the Assistant Chief Administration Officer Mr. Sampson Iroka had recommended to the committee other ways of tackling the corruption scourge.
According to him, these ways included “aggressive enlightment campaign on the ills of corruption, to refuse to cooperate or collaborate with or be part of corrupt practice since in most cases corruption requires the cooperation of many people to succeed as well as applying peer pressure on colleagues on the need to join the anti-corruption vanguard by refusing to take part in any corrupt practices like goods concealment, falsification of import and export documents, under-declaration of goods among others”.
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