The national president, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu has declared that the only solution to the rowdiness, sharp practices and the crowd control problem at the Tin Can port is that the Customs headquarters should split the command and appoint new Controllers to superintend them.
He argued that the current Tin Can command is too big for effective supervision by one Customs Area Controller and stated that the Customs command at the port have too many things to handle.
The national president, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu has declared that the only solution to the rowdiness, sharp practices and the crowd control problem at the Tin Can port is that the Customs headquarters should split the command and appoint new Controllers to superintend them.
He argued that the current Tin Can command is too big for effective supervision by one Customs Area Controller and stated that the Customs command at the port have too many things to handle.
“Let them spilt Tin Can into two and get a CAC to take charge of each command, there will be effective supervision, imagine from Port and Cargo to TICT and on and on, the man who is taking charge of this areas must be superhuman”, he stated. He said that each of the terminals should even have a CAC.
Tin Can currently has four terminals, namely: Port and Cargo, TICT, Josepdam and Five Star Logistics. “If KLT and Lillypond as small as they are can be a command, why can’t they spilt Tin Can command”, he argued.
According to him, the size of Tin Can is largely responsible for the various atrocities that are often committed there; he also alleged that every efforts by Customs Area Controllers are always being thwarted by the stakeholders at Tin Can port. He specifically fingered Customs officers, licensed customs agents and touts as always colluding to make sure that things don’t work.
The ANLCA president disagreed with the postulation that what draws crowd to Tin Can is the fact that it has terminals where imported used vehicles are cleared.
According, even though, neighbouring PTML handles imported vehicles, the kind of practices at Tin Can port are not prevalent at PTML.
“How come the amount that is used to clear at PTML is different from what is paid at Tin Can and all the terminals put together has only one valuation unit, the area is large, do you know that Tin can is larger than Apapa, the volume of cargo at Tin Can is increasing while that of Apapa is decreasing”.
According to him, it is not clearing of vehicles that is causing the problem at Tin Can; it is the size and the entrenched interests there.
He insisted that the Customs and the Police should be encouraged to clean up the place port through raid and arrests, but warned that any licensed customs agents who has genuine reason to be in the port and who has valid identification must not be arrested.
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