.NPA takes over terminal
By Uzor Odigbo
The officers and men of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) at the Tin Can II terminal will soon be redeployed to other commands.
This comes on the heels of the official takeover of Tin Can II terminal for use as truck park by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA).
The National Public Relations Officer of NCS, Deputy Comptroller Joseph Attah, told The Niche that the management of the Service was working on redeploying the officers at the command.
Attah however did not state exactly where and when the officers would be redeployed from the command but maintained that they would be redeployed to where they will be needed.
According to him, the management of the Customs is taking necessary actions to attend to the officers, working out their redeployment plans.
His words: “Redeployment is going to take place, the management is attending to them.”
Asked if the redeployment would not lead to redundancy, he said that if that was the case, the present recruitment exercise by the Service would not have been necessary.
He disclosed that the Service needed more personnel that would help to man the porous borders, and to help in carrying out physical examinations as a result of inadequate non-intrusive equipment.
“If it is going to lead to redundancy, then we should not embark on recruitment exercise. We need more hands, a lot more hands. Here we are talking about porous border, here we are talking about inadequate non-intrusive equipment such as scanners and all that demand physical examination and the physical examination is a tedious process and it is part of what delays clearance time,” he stated.
Meanwhile, when our correspondent visited the terminal yesterday, it was discovered that trucks were already parking at the facility while NPA had inscribed its name on the administrative block where used to bear Lilypond Container Terminal.
Though some containers could still be found around the terminal, they were few in number as trucks laden with containers have taken over the terminal.
