Freight Forwarders Advocate Return of Pre-shipment Inspectors, Committee to Address Shortfall in Import Process
By Francis Ugwoke
Freight forwarders have called for the re-introduction of pre-shipment inspection regime which was dropped for Destination Inspection (DI) some years ago as the only way to address issues of illicit cross-border movement of weapons of mass destruction(WMD) and other smuggling activities.
The freight forwarders also called for the constitution of a committee of National security and trade procedure experts to address the current short-fall in import processes which according to them constitutes bottlenecks and impede trade facilitation across border on ease of doing business.
President of the National Council of Managing Directors of Customs Agents (NCMDCA), Mr Lucky Amiwero in a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari said the current Destination Inspection being implemented by the Nigeria Customs Serviced (NCS) which allows goods to be imported into the country without pre-inspection contravenes various provisions of the World Customs Organisations (WCO) on facilitation of global trade and therefore harmful to Nigeria…
Part of his letter to the President reads, “ “Destination Inspection(DI) process of import on cargo allows the illicit cross-border movement of weapons of Mass Destruction(WMD), Drugs, Arms, Ammunitions, counterfeit merchandised hazardous waste and human trafficking as presently practiced in Nigeria, which allows goods into Nigeria without pre-screening to identify high risk goods before shipment.
“The process of no inspection/ prescreening of goods coming into Nigeria poses greater security risk by the influx of Arms, Ammunition, Contrabands, Narcotics, explosives (e.g., dirty bombs, and weapon of mass destruction (WMD) and unwholesome items in to the Country in contravention of standard 2, 3 and 11 of the WCO SAFE framework of Standard
”.
“Before the event of 9/11 Customs authority were responsible for the clearance of imported goods at the Port of destination, The event of 9/11 precipitated a change in Cargo inspection from destination to now at manufacturing site of Port of Loading, for the monitoring of supply chain mechanism of unwholesome products and revenue manipulation at Destination.
“Nigeria is a signatory to the convention of the WCO Safe Framework of Standard to secure and Facilitate Global Trade, which provides multilayered set of standards for container/cargo security, developed to enhance security, increase revenue and facilitate international trade through the following two pillars”:
He said there was the need to accommodate various pre-shipment Inspection processes under Customs control as conducted by other government agencies such as Customs, NAFDAC, SON, among others.
These agencies, he said have been involved in Quality , Quantity and Value assessment of imported goods as practised globally to safeguard the national security and reduce the process and cost of multiple charges.
He called for the urgent need to initiate the process of Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with various countries, where cargo throughput of import is high, such as China, Turkey, India, among others,. for the agreement of Mutual Administrative Assistant for collaborative activities on the prevention, investigation, repression and transnational crime as contained in various conventions .
Amiwero also called for the urgent need to repair the collapsed scanners in the ports as they serve as core security tool to reduce the influx of illicit goods in the country.
He wrote, “There is the urgent need to SAFEGUARD AND SECURE our nation from the influx of Arms, Ammunition, Narcotics, dirty Bomb, unwholesome items and Weapon of mass destruction (WMD) through the implementation of the provision of international Cargo Security Agreement.
“There is urgent need to constitute a committee of national security and trade procedure experts to address the short fall in the import process , which constitutes bottle necks and impede the component of trading across border on ease of doing business”.
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