By Uzor Odigbo
Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Bashir Adewale Adeniyi said a seamless port operation that works for 24 hours daily is possible in Nigeria with the support of all stakeholders and players in port operation.
Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of the recently concluded Comptroller General of Customs Conference in Lagos, Adeniyi said sister government agencies, whom he described as strategic partners and critical private private sector operators in port operations would have roles to play in making it a success.
While expressing optimism in the possibility of attaining the milestone within a defined timeline, Adeniyi said the NCS will rely on other players in the port system to achieve seamless output at various stages of cargo processing into and out of the count
He said “24 hour port operation is a conversation that have started between us and all our strategic partners, government agencies, non-government agencies and terminal operators. We believe it is possible for us to achieve 24 hours clearance but we know that Customs cannot do it alone even with the best of technology, we will still have to rely on terminal operators to bring down containers to position them for examination. We will have to rely on scanners, shipping lines, and trucks to move containers that have been released out of the port.
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“If the access roads are not good, and all these other things happening around the ports and borders are not addressed, we might not be able to achieve it.
This is why in this conference, we have designated a particular session where we talked to all these stakeholders that are involved and we deliberated on what else we can do to ensure the realization of 24 hours clearance of goods.
“Over the years, the mandate of Customs has undergone a lot of transformation.The environment is very dynamic .Twelve years ago, data was not as important or critical as it is today.Technology keeps changing rapidly and this is why we felt we needed to pick on a particular subject matter like data and see how we can maximize it’s potential for Customs Operations”
On revenue, Adeniyi clarified that the NCS target for collection in 2024 is N5tr and that the customs can collect higher than that if Nigeria get a lot of things right in the fiscal and trade environments
Adeniyi said the NCS would maximize the potentials of data that it has on trading, import, export, declarations made over time to address a number of areas which it may not have paid attention to in the past.
He added that going forward, customs would look at its strategies ,processes and procedures for streamlining to make quick turnaround of business and to facilitate trade for the overall interest of the economy.
Coming after the last edition was held eleven years ago in Katsina in 2012, this year’s CGC conference featured robust stakeholders interaction which culminated in the fixing of definite timelines to address alleged abuse of import and export guidelines by free trade zone operators, full deployment of ICT for cargo tracking and geospatial monitoring of trade within customs purview