Corruption at Ports: Shun Trade Malpractices, Dare Any Customs Officer, Others, ANLCA President Charges Customs Brokers
Nwabunike: My target is to transform image of brokers, remove tag of touts, indecency
By Francis Ugwoke
President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Iju Tony Nwabunike has called on customs brokers or freight forwarders to shun trade malpractices to be able to challenge any customs officer or other government agents who extort them at the nation’s ports.
Customs agents have been full of lamentations over allegations of corruption involving customs officers and other government agencies at the ports.
But often time, importers who they represent are accused of involvement in trade malpractices, including under-declaration, concealment and under-payment.
Nwabunike said the only way to seek justice was to have clean hands, adding that customs agents who have clean documentations from their importers can dare any officer who tries to rip him off at the ports.
The ANLCA President who acknowledged that there was indeed high level corruption at the ports said the war against this should start from them first by doing the right thing to be able to resist being extorted.
Part of the fight, he said was to be mindful of the type of job they accept from their principals for the sake of integrity and save themselves the embarrassment from either customs officers or any other government security agent.
“Every single Nigerian must be part of this government, government is saying zero that corruption. There is no place in the world where there is no corruption, but the level of corruption is what one is talking about. So I as Nigerian, we need to zero down our attitude. For me as a freight forwarder, I have decided not to do any job that is not dignifying. And I have been an architect of saying this everywhere I go, that a customs broker or freight forwarder must educate his importer and be acquainted with the tariffs, HS Codes and know what your importer is carrying and defend it. Look at your documents, your Form ‘M’, your CCVO, check them properly – are they corresponding with what you are having? If you have all these things and somebody is still asking you for money, this is where we now say Customs Forum will work effectively. On this issue, we are asking ourselves to do the right thing so that when anybody is confronting you with this level of high giving and taking, you resist. There is high level of corruption in the ports, but we must start from ourselves to fight it. Tony Iju will say I will not do this so that customs or Police or SSS will not embarrass me”.
Nwabunike also said that in the past two years, among his achievements was to change the concept of the association’s individualism to a kind of building an institution of ANLCA.
According to him “We have taken a decision of institutionalizing ANLCA internationally. We have calm relationship with government agencies instead of war war all the time. Again, we have achieved some level of decency in the sense of one begins to look at you with dignity, most time, people look at every single customs broker as touts, we want to remove that gap of indecency which has happened. Today, federal government interacts with us and asks us our input on policies. Today like Customs CG told me he will have customs consultative forum where we all put our heads together with customs and form a Committee that will breakdown all these problems in the ports.
“Now, I can tell you authoritatively that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation gets first hand information of what is happening in the ports through us. So we have succeeded in integrating ourselves back to the government and we want the federal government to know the essence of what the freight forwarders are doing”.
By Francis Ugwoke
President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Iju Tony Nwabunike has called on customs brokers or freight forwarders to shun trade malpractices to be able to challenge any customs officer or other government agents who extort them at the nation’s ports.
Customs agents have been full of lamentations over allegations of corruption involving customs officers and other government agencies at the ports.
But often time, importers who they represent are accused of involvement in trade malpractices, including under-declaration, concealment and under-payment.
Nwabunike said the only way to seek justice was to have clean hands, adding that customs agents who have clean documentations from their importers can dare any officer who tries to rip him off at the ports.
The ANLCA President who acknowledged that there was indeed high level corruption at the ports said the war against this should start from them first by doing the right thing to be able to resist being extorted.
Part of the fight, he said was to be mindful of the type of job they accept from their principals for the sake of integrity and save themselves the embarrassment from either customs officers or any other government security agent.
“Every single Nigerian must be part of this government, government is saying zero that corruption. There is no place in the world where there is no corruption, but the level of corruption is what one is talking about. So I as Nigerian, we need to zero down our attitude. For me as a freight forwarder, I have decided not to do any job that is not dignifying. And I have been an architect of saying this everywhere I go, that a customs broker or freight forwarder must educate his importer and be acquainted with the tariffs, HS Codes and know what your importer is carrying and defend it. Look at your documents, your Form ‘M’, your CCVO, check them properly – are they corresponding with what you are having? If you have all these things and somebody is still asking you for money, this is where we now say Customs Forum will work effectively. On this issue, we are asking ourselves to do the right thing so that when anybody is confronting you with this level of high giving and taking, you resist. There is high level of corruption in the ports, but we must start from ourselves to fight it. Tony Iju will say I will not do this so that customs or Police or SSS will not embarrass me”.
Nwabunike also said that in the past two years, among his achievements was to change the concept of the association’s individualism to a kind of building an institution of ANLCA.
According to him “We have taken a decision of institutionalizing ANLCA internationally. We have calm relationship with government agencies instead of war war all the time. Again, we have achieved some level of decency in the sense of one begins to look at you with dignity, most time, people look at every single customs broker as touts, we want to remove that gap of indecency which has happened. Today, federal government interacts with us and asks us our input on policies. Today like Customs CG told me he will have customs consultative forum where we all put our heads together with customs and form a Committee that will breakdown all these problems in the ports.
“Now, I can tell you authoritatively that the Secretary to the Government of the Federation gets first hand information of what is happening in the ports through us. So we have succeeded in integrating ourselves back to the government and we want the federal government to know the essence of what the freight forwarders are doing”.
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