Alhaji Tanko Ibrahim, the National coordinator of NAGAFF’s 100% Compliance Team.
The freight forwarders plying their trade at the Lagos ports are currently in a restive mood over what they claimed was the barefaced extortions, harassment and intimidation by the maritime police.
The aggrieved customs brokers , in their petition to the new Inspection General of police, Kayode Egbetokun , have therefore threatened to withdraw their services if the excesses of these police officers are not checked.
In a four- page protest letter signed by Alhaji Tanko Ibrahim, the National Coordinator of the 100 percent Compliance team of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), addressed to the IGP and dated August 22, 2023, the angry customs broker said the activities of these police officers have considerably impeded facilitation of trade.
In the petition, Tanko Ibrahim, who is also an elected member of the governing board of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding Practice in Nigeria (CRFFN), claimed these officers in connivance with the shipping companies, indescriminately stop and detain exited containers from the ports with the purpose of extorting money from the owners.
Tanko, who said these extortionist activities of the police were curtailed under the past administration of police IG due to the outcry of the oppressed fright forwarders, lamented that the menace has now become resurgent with new vigour, as the police now carry out their extortions in the open and with more intensity.
“Since the advent of the new administration, the officers and men of the Maritime Police have not only resumed these activities but also become even more daring”.
“They do not only block the release of containers from shipping companies, they also arrest and detain containers on the roads, and even allegedly go into fisticuffs with the officers of the Federal operations Unit of the Nigerian Customs service”
The petitioners however fingered one of the officers whom they said was daring and boastful of his nefarious activities.
“To compound and confound the matter, one of their officers, named Superintendent Kenneth Uwakool who has been at Kam Salem House for more than three year when the rapprochement was reached during the last administration is the unrepentant bagman and who openly boasts that he is a millionaire”.
“He sits atop proceedings in the extortion business’ the petitioners declared.
In the petition, each copy of which was sent to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, members of the National Assembly, and all the security agencies, Tanko Ibrahim who ventilated the foul mood of the angry freight forwarders claims that the marauding police officers collect as high as N2m to N3 from their victims on each containers before they let them go.
The petitioner wondered where these officers were when the Customs in collaboration with other sister agencies arrest containers with drugs, arms and ammunition, accusing them of looking the other way while these illicit goods are being ferried away under their noses.
He however appealed for prompt intervention of the new IGP in order to calm the frayed nerves of the harassed freight forwarders to stave off impending showdown with the extortionist police officers.
“We therefore, respectfully urge you sir, to call the Maritime Police to order and save the ports from an imminent restiveness that may paralyse business activities and further cause economic losses to government revenue”.
“We may have no option than to go on protest which may result in a possible shutdown of the seaports” the aggrieved freight forwarders threatened.
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