Hyacinth Chinweuba
The Apapa Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has appealed to importers and their agents to be transparent in their declaration of consignments to avoid any hitch and delays in documentation process.
This appeal was made in Lagos recently by the Customs Area Controller, Comptroller Jibrin Musa, while using the opportunity to appeal to those involved in fraudulent and false declaration of goods, underming that there had been challenges witnessed in the Command’s Central Server Operations of the Nigeria Customs Integrated Systems (NICIS 2), Tin Can Island Command as well as Kirikiri Lighter Terminal Commands, which has similar problems.
The Controller said that the Server breakdown has affected Jobs of the Command causing serious delays in clearance of goods.
He therefore described the challenge as a System error which have been experienced in the execution of the NICIS 2, adding that, they could not access any work, and importers had not been able to capture their jobs, this however accrues additional delay of goods clearance before taking delivery.
He pointed out that, meetings are being held with the NICIS 2 Team on the major System errors so far experienced, saying that the NICIS 2 project has earlier kick started at KLT command and later advanced to Tin Can Customs, admitting that the challenges would be addressed, he assured.
Comptroller Jibrin gave an assurance that the server failures will not affect the Command’s revenue profile, but would gain momentum.
He expressed dissatisfaction that Apapa port have only one “Workable Scanning Machine”, which is not adequate going by the backlog of containers at the port.
He also revealed that there is only one workable Scanner at Apapa, Tin Can Island port and there are other places that have no existence of Scanning Machines. It’s only one at Apapa that is functional, which is not good for quick service delivery.
He said if every importer want their containers to be scanned at the same time, with only one scanner functioning, how would it be possible with the backlog of containers at the Terminal, stressing that the other challenge experienced is the roads which he said is still faced with rehabilitation process, he said.