Police, Customs tango over extensive extortions at Nigerian Ports
By Uzor Odigbo
Freight forwarders trading at the Lagos ports are currently in a restive mood over what they claimed was the barefaced extortions, harassment and intimidation by the maritime police.
The aggrieved customs brokers , in their petition to the new Inspection General of police, Kayode Egbetokun , have therefore threatened to withdraw their services if the excesses of these police officers are not checked.
In a four- page protest letter signed by Alhaji Tanko Ibrahim, the National Coordinator of the 100 percent Compliance team of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), addressed to the IGP and dated August 22, 2023, the irate customs brokers said the activities of these police officers have considerably impeded facilitation of trade.
In the petition, Tanko Ibrahim, who is also an elected member of the governing board of the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding Practice in Nigeria (CRFFN) ,claimed these officers, in connivance with the shipping companies, indecriminately stop and detain exited containers from the ports with the purpose of extorting money from the owners.
Tanko, who said these extortionist activities of the police were curtailed under the past administration of police IG due to the outcry of the oppressed fright forwarders, lamented that the menace has now resurgent with new vigour, as the police now carry out their extortions in the open.
“Since the advent of the new administration, the officers and men of the Maritime Police have not only resumed these activities but also even more daring.
“They do not only block the release of containers from shipping companies, they also arrest and detain containers on the roads, and even allegedly go into fisticuffs with the officers of the Federal operations Unit of the Nigerian Customs service”
The petitioners however fingered one of the officers whom they said was daring and boastful of his nefarious activities.
“To compound and confound the matter, one of their officers, named Superintendent Kenneth Uwakool,who has been at Kam Salem House for more than three years,when the rapprochement was reached during the last administration, is the unrepentant bagman,who openly boasts that he is a millionaire.
“He sits atop proceedings in the extortion business’ the petitioners declared.
In the petition, each copy of which was sent to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, members of the National Assembly, and all the security agencies, Tanko Ibrahim, who ventilated the foul mood of the angry freight forwarders, claimed that the maurunding police officers collect as high as N2m to N3 from their victims on each containers before they let them go.
The petitioners wondered where these officers were when the Customs, in collaboration with other sister agencies, arrest containers with drugs, arms and ammunition, accusing them of looking the other way while these illicit goods are being ferried away understand their nose.
He however appealed for prompt intervention of the new IGP in order to calm the frayed nerves of the harassed freight forwarders to starve off impending showdown with the extionining police officers.
“We therefore, respectfully urge you sir, to call the Maritime Police to order and save the ports from an imminent restiveness that may paralyze business activities and further cause economic loss to government revenue.
“We may have no option than to go on protest which may result in a possible shutdown of the seaports” the aggrieved freight forwarders threatened
