By Steve Agbota
Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) has vowed to put an end to corruption in the nation’s ports by exposing and humiliating government officials demanding bribes and frustrating the joint boarding of vessels at the seaport.
These officials are causing unnecessary delay when carrying out joint boarding of vessels while demandingbribes from ships’ crew.
NSC Executive Secretary, Hassan Bello, who disclosed this during a virtual press briefing organised by the Council in collaboration with the Independent Corrupt Practices and other Related Offences Commission (ICPC) in Abuja, said that $20,000 bribe was recovered from boarding officials during an inspection at the port.
He said while there has been some appreciable level of compliance by agencies inspecting ships since the implementation of the Nigerian Port Process Manual (NPPM), others are yet to fully comply with the new standard operating procedures.
He said: “We have recovered $20,000 being bribe money by people who go onboard vessels. We are monitoring this process and if we find any agency frustrating this process, we are going to name and shame them publicly and also arrest them.”
Bello said situations where vessels call at the port and have to wait for almost three hours before they are boarded is not acceptable as it impacts negatively on cargo dwell time and ultimately increases cost of doing business at the port.
“I want to appeal to Customs and other agencies to allow this joint inspection work. Seven days cargo dwell time can be achieved if we have joint boarding of vessels and joint inspection of cargo. The current twenty-one days cargo dwell time is because there is no joint examination.
“What kind of country or port do we want if agencies responsible for joint examination don’t report on time? Examination of cargo should be done at a given time and people should abide by the SOP as far as clearance of cargo is concerned,” he said.
Meanwhile, the spokesperson of ICPC, Azuka Ogugua, who represented the Chairman of the Commission, said the agency would enforce sanctions on any government entity or official that fails to comply with the procedure for joint boarding of vessels.
She said: “Part of our mandate as a law enforcement agency is to tackle corruption.