Confirming this to newsmen recently, the Apapa Chapter Chairman of the National Council of Managing Director Licensed Customs Agent (NCMDLCA), Emeka Enwelu, confirmed the lateness of Apapa Customs officer to examination bays.
According to him, “examination of cargoes at Apapa has gone down from 300 containers per day to 200 containers due to the attitude to work by the officers.
“Customs officers come for examination around 12pm to 1pm daily. That is the actual time they use to come for examination and we have complained on that issue over time for them to come early for examination so that we can get our cargoes out of the ports in good time, but we spend a whole day on examination. if only they can arrive at the examination bay by 10am, cargoes will exit the ports faster.”
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Enwelu further stated that because of the delay experienced, clearing agents find it difficult to examine and released goods on same day.
He said agents are forced to comeback the following day for release of their consignment thereby causing increase in storage charges.
Another clearing agent, Chijioke Ebuka however urged the federal government to ensure that customs adhere strictly to the implementation of the executive order. He also stated that delay experienced at the examination bays, affect the number of cargoes to be released daily.
However, when contacted, the Command Public Relations Officer, Nkiru Nwala, stated that the examination bays are not owned by the customs but the terminal operators, just as there are other federal agencies involved in the cargo examination process.
In her words, “as the custodians of the examination bays, the terminal operators position the cargo for inspection and notifies the Customs, which in turn informs other relevant agencies to assemble for examination.
“This has been particularly so since the implementation of the Executive Order on the Ease of Doing Business at the Ports, which empowered Customs to coordinate the other examining agencies.”
Nwala further explained that there are many terminals in the Apapa Port Complex, wondering how the agents came about the statistics being bandied about that released containers dropped from about 300 to 200 allegedly because Customs officials do not arrive early for inspection.
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