By Steve Agbota
The Nigeria Customs Service has described as untrue recent allegation made by National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) that its server keeps failing, recently for up to four days at a stretch, causing backlog of uncleared cargoes. Customs Public Relations Officers of the three busiest ports in the country told our reporter that such server failure never happened in their commands.
Abubakar Usman, Uche Ejesieme and Ifeoma Onuigbo of Apapa, Tincan Island and Onne Port Commands who spoke in different telephone interviews described it as untrue. Usman said: “Not to the best of my understanding in Apapa. They should be specific about which of the ports, we did not experience four days down time”
Reacting too Ejesieme said: “It can’t be Tin Can. We are not aware of that. We don’t have backlog of uncleared cargoes due to network issues, that’s a lie.
“Network has never been our challenge. Anytime there is issue of network failure, we notify Webb Fontaine and Interswitch, the technical partners to Customs to address it. “Don’t forget that we don’t control network. The federal government appointed Webb Fontaine and Interswitch to provide the technical support, so network has never been the problem. Occasionally it comes and goes; sometimes it fluctuates, but that wasn’t the problem at all.