By Godfrey Bivbere
Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has been directed by the Finance Minister, Mr Olusegun Aganga, to produce monthly reports and analysis of all cargoes at the nation’s seaports.

The Minister who gave the directive during a working visit to the Lagos ports, charged the Customs management to prepare reports on cargoes at the  ports in the last three months.

Aganga, said the reports should include cargoes that were cleared within 48 hours and those that had stayed in the ports beyond 48 hours.

The Minister explained that he was at the Ports to look at the state of the scanners provided by the destination inspection service providers, to have a very good understanding of how to transform the customs service and the challenges officers and men of the service were facing in growing the economy.

“We want to transform and modernise customs which means we have to invest in their training and welfare”, Aganga said.

“Customs plays a big role in growing the economy and is important as a revenue generator for the economy as well as in trade facilitation.

“We want customs to become a significant contributor to the nation’s revenue.
“We want you to excel in trade facilitation. We talked about 48 hours but we have not achieved this.

“Depending on the risk assessment of the cargo, it is possible to have clearance in less than 48 hours”, Aganga said.
The Minister said there had been cases of goods staying at the ports for more than 48 hours which mostly had to do with false declarations.

He said the Federal Government would do a  review of the 48 hours cargo clearance policy to see what the bottlenecks are.

Aganga said, “50 per cent of the target you (customs) were doing when I came in newly as a Minister was not good enough.”

He, however, said he was pleased that he had worked very closely with the Comptroller_General of Customs, Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi who explained to him reasons for the variances.

“I am happy to say this month and last month, customs exceeded their targets”, he said.
The Minister added that the Tin_Can Island command exceeded its target by 25 per cent, saying that the Apapa Customs command also recorded a good improvement of an increase in revenue by 12 per cent.

Aganga who earlier visited the Cotecna Destination Inspection Ltd. scanner sites at both the Tin_Can Island and Apapa ports, was conducted round the facilities by the Managing Director, Mr Tayo Rabiu.

The minister was also at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport where he was conducted round the three scanning sites by the Chief Executive Officer of Global Scansystems Nigeria Ltd, Mr Fred Udechukwu.

He interacted with officers and men of the customs command being trained by Global Scansystems on image analysis and scanning.

Aganga commended the service providers on capacity building which he said had increased the efficiency of customs officers who would be required to handle the scanners by 2012.

He, however, said he would conduct an independent audit of what the service providers had done so far to ensure they had complied with the agreement in place with the Federal Government.

Udechukwu told the Minister that the company had effectively trained numerous customs officers who are now very effective in handling the scanners in preparation for the take_over of the functions by customs officers by 2012.

The Murtala Muhammed International Airport Customs Command in its report to the Minister, said Global Systems was responsible for the provision of hi breed scanners to facilitate destination inspection process, issuance of Risk Assessment Report (RAR), manpower training and capacity building at the airport.

The management of the Airport Command said Global Scansystems, in the month of July received a total applications of 54,135 for issuance of RARs, out of which 50,617 were raised.

Customs Area Controller, Apapa Command, Alhaji Abdulkadir Azarema, however, told the Minister that low level of compliance with procedures by importers and their agents through dishonest and invalid declarations had been one of the major challenges.