Aviacargo committee visits Lilypond Customs area command

IN its resolve to make Nigeria the number one cargo destination in Africa,the Aviacargo Roadmap Committee set up by the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN) has declared that with the large quantity of agricultural produce taking place in Nigeria that nothing should have prevented the largest black populated country from being the number one aviacargo destination on the continent.

Speaking on behalf of the committee during a visit to the Lilypond Nigeria Customs Area Command office at Apapa, the national coordinator of the committee, Mr Ikechi Uko, lamented how some impediments confronting Nigeria have denied the country of taking its top status among the top aviacargo countries around the world.

Uko who said the determination to tackle the challenges with the view to repositioning Nigeria, as number one cargo nation in Africa was what gave birth to the committee however used the visit to seek for symbiotic relationship with the Lilypond Customs area command.

Making reference to how Kenya, a smaller country remains the number one aviacargo country in Africa, Uko said this contradicted the position of Nigeria as the largest producer of agricultural producer and yet being number five on the hierarchy of aviarcargo nations.

“Nigeria doesn’t export much. In aviacargo Nigeria is number five, number one is Kenya, number two is Egypt, number three is South Africa, four is Ethiopia and Lagos airport is number five despite the fact that, we are number one in population, number one in economy and we have the largest number of travellers.

“To get Nigeria from five to number one is not something that can be done overnight, we need to find out what others did. The Lagos economy is bigger than the economy of Kenya, the population of three states is larger than Kenya, the airport in Kenya is not as big as any of our airports, their airline is not the best in Africa and why is Kenya doing better than everybody else? We found out that they have a roadmap, they have a strategy plan and they are implementing it.”

The aviacargo committee national coordinate while during the visit to the customs area command told the comptroller, Mr Muhamed Babandede and his men that the committee was set up explained to make Nigeria a hub in aviacargo.

“So we decided to ask ourselves, why are we not number one in doing cargo, export? We found out there are challenges everywhere. I organized a cargo conference called Chinet for aviacargo and FAAN decided that we should do a roadmap to find out how to make Nigeria number one, the idea is to make Nigeria a hub in cargo, even if we are importing let’s make money from both import and export.”

The roadmap to be put together by the committee Uko said will be targeting how to grow the country’s aviacargo in the next three years and equally position it in the world map as the number one in aviacargo, which he said, will on the long run be of benefit to FAAN, customs and the economy.

“We produce a lot of things, 53million tons of yam, Ghana produces only eight milliontonnes but Nigeria doesn’t export yams, Ghana exports our yams and for a lot of things, they export on our behalf, they put it as produce of Ghana but we bring it from Nigeria and export. Why have we not been able to do that because we have not put in place a system that will adequately take care of the things that we produce. We produce a lot of things in this country but we are not able to sell.”

Some  of the factors militating against the the acceptance of goods produced in Nigeria according to Uko to include, “poor packaging, the quality is poor and those that are time dependent arrived when the goods are dried and expired so, part of why the committee was set up is to solve this problem. In setting up the committee we invited the agencies that are all involved in the process”.

In his response’ the Comptroller, Customs Area Command, Lilypond, Apapa, Mohammed Babandede who identified stated some challenges earlier experienced by the command when it came onboard in November last year to include: challenges of rejection of Nigeria goods, delay and cancellation of contracts which made the then Comptroller General to give the them the mandate to remove the bottlenecks and other stumbling blocks, however said the command had been able to surmount the problems.

The ability of the command to overcome the bottlenecks, the comptroller said was responsible for the $200million revenue the command generated in the first quarter of this year even as he assured it would continue to increase as the command continues to up its game in the service.

According to the comptroller; “For example, your hibiscus flower from Kano cannot get to Lagos within five days because from Ogere, it will take 30-40 days to get to Apapa or tincan and by then this produce would have gone bad and when it gets to its destination it will be rejected why, because the roads are congested.”

Talking on how the command was able to minimise rejection of Nigeria goods which he said most of the exporters have attested to, he cited how the command invited the relevant agencies with offices given to them which made available the opportunity to carry out an examination on the goods.

“Another thing we handled was to ensure that no intervention that is no loss of consignment, this means DSS would not stop a consignment at the mother ports or on the road or NAFDAC or any other customs, once it is done and treated, it means it will be ready to go, so these are some of the things as our strategy plans for us to promote the business of export out of Nigeria”.

“Contract cancellation, exports are mostly FOB’s, therefore it is the uptaker that handles the freight, so if this is his vessel that is leaving Nigeria by this coming Saturday, you miss that vessel most often, they cancel the contract and we ensure timely delivery of the released boxes to the mother ports so that, this contract cancellation can be a thing of the past, we have done that”.

Babandede who said the only way to overcome the challenges confronting cargo business rests on the ability of the exporters to adhere to standards and goods packaging, however pledged to assist the committee in anyway necessary to grow the Nigeria economy through the export of Nigeria goods.