Steve Agbota
Former member Presidential Taskforce on the Reform of Nigeria Customs Service; Presidential Committee on Destination Inspection and Ministerial Committee on Fiscal Policy and Import Clearance Procedure, Lucky Amiwero, has said Nigeria would require about €1,673,491 billion to fix all malfunctioniing scanners at the nation’s ports and borders posts.
Amiwero said that presently no functional scanners at the seaports and land borders is working collapsing between 2014 and 2015, leading to the resort to physical cargo examinations.
In a letter to President Muhammadu Buhari, and obtained by Daily Sun, Amiwero said the brokendown scanners necessitated the adoption of 100 per cent physical inspection/Customs examination that is quite laborious in the un-stuffing and loading of goods, which in most cases are destroyed during offloading and re-loading from the containers.
According to him, the breakdown of the scanners resulted to serious delays, with high demurrage, rent, high security implication for non-application of scanners for the detection of unwholesome goods, arms and ammunitions in contravention of WCO Kyoto Convention and WCO SAFE Frame work protocol, that mandates contracting member to use Non intrusive Inspection(NII) (Scanners) as a security and facilitating tool.
On the cost to fix the collapsed scanners as been recommended by the implementation transition committee, he said it will cost €76,152,00 to fix scanners at Apapa port, €326,518,00 to fix scanners at Seme Border, €663,645,00 to fix Mobile scanners at Warri port, €200,052,00 to fix Mobile scanners Idiroko border, €407,123.00 to fix Mobile scanners at Apapa port while a total cost €1,673,491 billion will be required for TinCan Island Port
According to him, the present state of the scanning equipment at the ports is totally due to neglect by the government agency that supervised the transfer to take cognizance of the accommodation of six months maintenance, labor and spare parts after the hand over, which should have transferred almost a new equipment to the Federal Government going by the provision of Articles 4.2 and 4.3, that requires any fault part to be replaced in line with the agreement.
Speaking on the present state of the collapse scanners and the recommendation by the transition implementation committee in the Smith Detection Report to return the disused scanners to the delivery state, he said most of the fixed scanner where commissioned from 2010 to 2012 ,Cotecna, which include two(2) of 9.0MeV Dual Fixed Scanners for Apapa and Tincan, GlobalScan 9.0 Mev Dual View Fixed Scanners and relocatable at onne ports.
He noted that the dixed scanners falls within seven to nine years as at date, which is still operationally acceptable internationally either for upgrade, enhancement.
He added: “40 per cent of the monthly fees of the service providers would be retained by the Government as a performance retainer until the completion of the acceptance procedure, before payment of the the retainer fees as contained in the report.
“Re-evaluate the scanners to know the present state and update the scanners as recommended by Smith Detection the manufacturers of the scanners by procedure expert. Look into the main cause of the collapse scanners, and if possible work out a PPP arrangement to maintain the scanners by releasing part of 1 per cent FOB provided for Inspection under Pre-Shipment Inspection Act 11 Section 3.”