By Innocent Chukwu
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has expressed serious worry over what it referred to as the issue of “Cargo Integrity” which the Service insists is very low in the country. The NCS also lamented that cargo integrity has been highly compromised by freight forwarders and customs-licensed clearing agents.
Cargo Integrity is a term used by global customs service to refer to honest declaration of cargoes or container contents by freight forwarders and clearing agents during the process of clearing their imports from the ports. According to the Nigeria Customs, the cargo integrity deficit in the country results in the crisis of delays in cargo clearance at the ports, unnecessary demurrage, port congestion, inefficiencies, high cost of doing business in the ports, as well as the resultant hike in the prices of items imported into the country.
This revelation was made in Lagos on Friday, December 15, 2023 during the stakeholders forum at the closing session of the NCS’ annual Comptroller General’s Conference which held at the Continental Hotel Lagos. The three -day Conference had its theme as “Leveraging Data Analytics for Secure and Efficient Trade Facilitation in Customs Operations”.
At the forum which had various stakeholders in the maritime business industry, the Comptroller General of Customs (CGC), Bashir Adewale Adeniyi who declared open the discussions, said the basic issue was about 24 hours cargo clearing in the nation’s ports and how to make it achievable. Adeniyi decried the length of time it took cargoes to be cleared from the ports, insisting that the focus was whether it could be possible for goods to be cleared within 48 hours.
Adeniyi had raised such posers as, “Can we say in three months from now we want it to be reduced by three weeks? Can we say at the end of 2024 we want it to be reduced to one week? Can we say by the end of 2024 we could have achieved 24 hours clearing?”
The customs boss also said that the NCS had identified various factors militating against the ease of doing business in the ports. According to Adeniyi, these factors include officers issuing multiple alerts on cargoes, officers late coming attitude to work, extortion by officers, issuance of Debit Notes (DN) that lack merit, officers requesting indiscriminate dropping of containers and late processing of transires as well as export issues.
Other areas include various checkpoints outside the ports, interference by other government agencies in the course of clearing and issues of bad roads. Adeniyi promised the maritime business community that the customs management under his watch was working seriously to deal with these issues in order to achieve 48 hours clearing period.
Speaking further on achieving 24 hours clearing time, the Comptroller of Customs in charge of Tincan Island Port Command, Dera Nnadi, stressed that cargo integrity was very low in Nigeria. Comptroller Nnadi argued that false declaration by freight forwarders, transfer of cargo value, concealment of cargo and wrong declaration of cargo were all issues opposed to trade facilitation in Nigeria.
Relating to the scanners, Comptroller Nnadi said, “Ninety percent of us don’t want to use the scanner because cargo integrity is compromised. People fear that if their containers are scanned and there’s inconsistency, they would lose their container. On the issue of rerouting, if it’s possible, let us scan all containers; why are we resisting that?”
Comptroller Nnadi added that poor equipment in the ports was responsible for delays in cargo examination, and advocated for a random selection of bill ladings carrying homogeneous cargoes and examine a sample of such containers by allowing the selected sample go through the scanner, and if the sample selected had no issues, the rest of the bill ladings should be allowed to go without passing through scanning. This method will also reduce the clearing period, Comptroller Nnadi said.
Speaking further, Nnadi said customs want to work on Saturdays and Sundays as obtained in other countries. He asked, “Why do we shut down our ports on Saturdays and Sundays? Weekend operation is going to help us to reduce congestion. We need to agree to work 24 hours. NPA should help us secure the port corridors so that agents can clear their cargoes 24 hours”.
