From Ndubuisi Orji, Abuja
The House of Representatives Committee on Customs, yesterday, grilled the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and Nigerian Customs Service ( NCS) over congestions at various ports across the country.
The committee decried the congestion at the ports saying it was frustrating the ease of doing business and denying the country revenue.
Chairman of the Committee, Leke Abejide, while speaking an interactive session between lawmakers and key players at the port, decried the long processes involved in clearing cargoes at ports in the country.
He said the interactive session was organised to proffer lasting solution to congestions at the ports and make them more competitive.
He said bonded containers that are supposed to be dropped at sea side by the shipping lines are not being allocated to other bonded terminals.
“Apart from the cost which is abnormal and triple, there is time consumption which leads to delays and makes nonsense of the Federal Government policy of Ease of Doing Business.”
He queried the shippers council on what it was doing to monitor the excesses of shipping lines in trying to kill the export business by leaving export full containers at the ports to load empty containers for juicy import freight that are in the range of $17,000 per container when they know that import is a leakage to the economy while export is an injection into the economy.
Acting Managing Director of NPA, Mohammed Koko, in his presentation, accused the police and other security agencies at the ports for the congestions.
“There’s the issue of extortion, there are multiple checkpoints in the ports extorting people. And these checkpoints are manned by police officers. At times you find men in naval or military uniform extorting vehicles illegally and Lagos state government has been very cooperative in terms of enforcement of the SOP as it relate to the truck call up system. “