By Godfrey Bivbere

National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agent (ANLCA), Prince Olayewola Shittu has said that he is ready to fight for the any upright clearing agent who is being intimidated in the course of performing their duty.

Shittu who disclosed this in a chat with Vanguard, said he is working at bringing professionalism to the clearing profession and as such will do every thing within his powers to protect any agent performing his duties for his principle in line with the laid down rules and regulations by the government.

The ANLCA boss explained that what most agents do not know is that by working in line with government rules, they are not only making clean money and making a name for themselves but are also ensure that government revenue through duties payable are not lost.

He noted that a situation where an importer determine how much to pay an agent for the clearance of his goods only goes to portray agents as a bunch of people who do not know what they are doing.

Shittu who is also the Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer of Skelas Group, pointed out that the greatest danger of allowing the importer to decide what to pay for the clearance of their consignment is that agents are exposing themselves to unnecessary risk.

HE explained that since agent do not know the content of a container imported into the country by the owner, ensuring that owner of the consignment pay the right duty in case there is discrepancies in the what is declared and what is discovered in it during 100 percent examination becomes very imperative.
He warned all agents to desist from working on bad jobs as ANLCA under his leadership is not prepare to make a case for those who involves themselves in any of such bad jobs.

According to him, “If anybody is caught forging document they will say they are members of ANLCA, is it the association that ask him to forge documents, that is why our maxim here is fraud at your own risk’ even if the person says I am his father, the fact remains that whoever perpetrated fraud will face the music.”

He further pointed out that there are so many people in the ports that do not have speciality, but because there are some commercial licenses and if you investigate you will find out they are owned by big men up there who loan it out and collect money every month.
He noted that it is those stamps that these set of people use to carry out their jobs including some of the officers too.
It is when the deal goes wrong that such people claim to be ANLCA members and we on our own tried to use our broach to be able to identify ANLCA members at a glance, but do you know what, they are now in the hands of non_ ANLCA members, so we have to stop sale, he concluded.