By Joy Enamuna
The National Coordinator of the 100% Compliance Team of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Alhaji Ibrahim Tanko expressed his total dissatisfaction with a rescent press release issued by the Managing Director of wealthy Honey Investment Kayode Farinto in which he asked the Federal government to sack Finance Minister and Nigerian Customs Service management team.
Speaking at the weekend with some journalists in Apapa, Lagos, Nigeria, Tanko reaffirm 100% Compliance Team vision. He said:”l disagreed with the opinion of Dr. Farinto, l have been personally compaiging against non compliance in the ports since the past one year and three months to my fellow agents, Shippers and bounded Terminals to do the right thing”.
Tanko while still expressing his bitterness over the statements by Dr.Farinto, alleged that some of clearing agents normally underdeclear their goods, and If Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) is to do their jobs properly, a lot of containers wouldn’t exit the ports. He added that genuine declaration wouldn’t warrant Demand Notice (DN) to start with, “If you do the right thing, do you think anybody will just come and raise a DN for you”? he said.
“If there is a DN raised on a particular consignment, and you dont understand and you are very sure of your declaration, then you write a protest letter to the Custom Area Controller of that command (CAC). The CAC will tell them to go and re-examine the cargo.”
According to Tanko, ” l watched an interview of Dr. Farinto where he asked Federal government to sack or removal Minister of Finance and the current management services of NCS. In my own opinion, l dont see any reason for that, rather dialogue will solve the problem”.
He said the Federal Government agencies will ensure there are due process of documented evidence before any head of Government agencies is been sack.
While reiterated his stand, Tanko debunked the fact that there are no official 25 tables of processing documents for clearing one by 20ft container’ rather only 3 official tables.
“However, I am appealing to the Federal Government and Nigerian Customs Service to beam their search light on the activities of some of these bounded r
terminals and with draw licences of the ones that are not qualified so they can upgrade thier equipment.