Prince Eze Uchendu, NAGAFF Apapa chapter chairman.
Story by Dili Utomi.
The prevailing business environment and the economic situation around Apapa Ports and the country in general is giving a whole part of the population sleepless nights and it is in consideration of the different elements interplay around the area that we sought the opinion of the seasoned chairman of the Apapa chapter of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Prince Eze Uchendu on the activities within the Ports and generally the logistics chain value.
Prince Uchendu first and foremostly commended the choice of Adewale Adeniyi as the new Acting Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service. He said that having a seasoned and full fledged Customs officer as the CG is a much welcome gesture as he noted that ” the job of a physician should be given to a physician and that of a legal practitioner should be given to a lawyer, this is like an answered prayer, though much is expected of the Acting CG, Adeniyi”.
“The Acting CG is a well trained officer who is also well acquainted with the workings in the Customs especially in the area of operations. Our expectations from him are, seeing workable Customs policies and ideas, full commitment on the part of officers and the full implementation of Customs procedures. Our expectations are not so because we think that because he is a Customs officer, he should do it, but because we know that he has got what it takes to do it all. We know that he can help renew the working relationship with the stakeholders and of course help the government to meet the revenue target set for the Customs”.
About the immediate past CG, Prince Uchendu said that one can only give what he has and that the immediate past CG had that limitation as he was not a Customs officer and therefore lacked the needed knowledge to properly administer the Customs.
On the question of the performance of the concessioneers at the Ports, the chairman said that “AP Moller Terminal’s operations in Nigeria is poor, fraudulent, full of inefficiency and this is my total assessment of the operations of APMT in Nigeria. They are looters and having increased the charges from what the NPA was collecting as at the time of the concession to over a thousand percent of what it was then, they reap off Nigerian businessmen, siphoning our funds with all kinds of charges and repatriating same to their mother country”.
He admonished the federal legislators to take a proper look at the contract signed to concession part of the Port to such an operator as the APMT which they have abused with impunity. There have been general allegations of deliberate act of slowing down the return of empty containers to the Ports, inefficiency, corruption, arbitrary charges and increase in charges against the APM Terminal by virtually every stakeholder in the industry and these acts have been seemingly going on unabatedly.
Prince Uchendu described the APMT examination bay as “only befitting animals as they are muddy, dirty, dilapidated and inhuman in nature”. APMT’s concession contract should not be renewed based on their performance over time. A committee should be set up to audit their repatriation of funds to their parent country and aslo their operations in Nigeria over the years”.
He also delved into the case of the incoming Customs Area Controller of the Apapa Command of the Nigeria Customs Service and said that he personally knows him and expects that he performs very well.
The chairman delved into the issue of network failure as usually reported by Eco Support Terminal and said that it is one of the unfortunate realities of our nation. He condemned the level of corruption in the traffic control mechanism around the Ports area where security agencies connive to duplicate call up letters, truck queues, buying of call up letters and all the deliberate efforts at frustrating the e-call system known as eto. He advised that all the uniformed men used in the control of traffic should be completely redeployed.
For advert placement and more information, please call us on 08027590195, 08035721540 or email us at [email protected] or send us messages on twitter @dn_utomi or on instagram @utomidili.
