Reps order forensic probe of firm over service failure to customs

The House of Representatives Committee on Customs and Excise has resolved to engage forensic experts to probe the activities of Webb Fontaine, a firm engaged by the federal government to provide IT infrastructure and telecommunication services to the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), over its service failure and inefficiency.

Chairman of the committee, Leke Abejide, disclosed this when representatives of customs, Ministry of Finance and Webb Fontaine appeared before the committee for an interactive session.

Daily Trust Saturday reports that Webb Fontaine was engaged by the Federal Ministry of Finance in 2006 to implement a customs-centric single window portal and provide IT and telecommunication infrastructure for the customs. 

Speaking during the interactive session, representative of the Ministry of Finance, Ali Mohammed, told the committee that Webb Fontaine had not been living up to expectation as there had been frequent service failure across ports and customs commands in the country which had led to loss of revenue to the federal government.

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He said the hiccups and downtimes experienced in service provision had led to non-clearing of goods at ports resulting in disruption of businesses, in addition to incurring unwarranted demurrage by stakeholders.

Also speaking, customs representative, Kingsley Egwuh, lamented that the hiccups and downtimes in service provision by the firm had negatively impacted the operations of the customs.

Responding, the Managing Director of Webb Fountaine, Ope Babalola, who acknowledged service failures and downtimes on the part of his firm, however, said that its site engineers who were stationed across the country usually responded promptly in fixing such service failures.

He said some of the challenges faced were due to failure on the part of the network service providers, noting that his firm had to change its network service providers some time back.

But ruling on the matter, Hon Abejide said forensic experts would be engaged to examine the activities of Webb Fountaine since it was engaged till date with a view to ascertaining revenue losses to the country and whether there was need for payment of compensation or refund to the government by the firm.