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Scanners and weigh-stations at ports

Assistant Comptroller General (ACG) of Customs Charles Edike recently lamented the poor state of facilities at the nation’s seaports. Edike, ACG in charge of Zone…

Assistant Comptroller General (ACG) of Customs Charles Edike recently lamented the poor state of facilities at the nation’s seaports. Edike, ACG in charge of Zone A, spoke during a tour of Customs commands in the zone. He decried how private Destination Inspection contractors at the Apapa port handed over dead scanners to the Customs when it took over Destination Inspection. He said only two of the three levels of scanner maintenance can be carried out by the Customs while one level of maintenance is the duty of the manufacturer. He said when the scanner’s manufacturer was contacted to carry out its part of the maintenance schedule, it argued that its agreement was with the service providers and not with the Customs Service.
Edike further said when the former contractors were not forthcoming to get the scanners working, the Customs brought in foreign experts to work on the fixed scanners. The scanners were fixed but they worked for only two weeks before they packed up again. Afterwards, he said Customs asked its officers to work on the scanners and they managed to put them to work.  According to Edike, the Comptroller General of Customs (CGC) is working hard to get over the challenges posed by failing scanners.
These scanners are critical to the Customs’ Destination Inspection operations because they go a long way to improve upon the time and cost of doing business at the seaports. Edike said for instance that when the fixed and mobile scanners were all functioning at the Apapa port, Customs officers used to scan between 450 and 500 containers a day. It even had to run day and night shifts among officers. ACG Edike also mentioned how the Customs at the ports depend on the servers of communication giants to perform their duties.
Besides the challenges of scanners is another worrisome matter which concerns Nigeria’s readiness to beat the new deadline set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) on the establishment of weigh-stations at seaports. The IMO law makes it compulsory for all consignments meant for export to be weighed before leaving their ports of origin. The IMO law on weigh-stations is expected to take effect on July 1, 2016. Stakeholders at a recent workshop with the theme ‘Transport Cost and Regional Connectivity of African Countries’ kicked against the July 2016 deadline, saying all the countries in the West African sub-region, except Ghana, are not ready with their weigh-stations. 
A senior staff of the ministry of transportation who disclosed this said government is considering whether to construct the weigh-stations before their concession or construct them on Public-Private-Partnership basis. The important question in the weighing of consignments revolves around who operates the weigh-stations. If terminal operators at the ports are allowed to handle weighing at the weigh-stations, there is a possibility for them to see such as a window for exploiting Nigerian shippers.   
There are several implications for the lack of or faulty facilities at the nation’s ports. The Customs Service managed to take over Destination Inspection duties from private contractors about two years ago. Scanners are central to the process because otherwise every container must be opened and physically examined, which will take ages. This will in turn drive port users away to other ports in neighbouring countries, after which goods destined for Nigeria will be smuggled into the country through the land borders.
Although the absence of weigh-stations specifically affects shippers and shipping lines through mis-declaration of containers by exporters, we encourage government to provide them to forestall shippers from refusing to load export consignments from Nigerian ports. Government loses if ships fail to load for export but gains much from the export of goods. Given the current situation of the fight against insurgency and dwindling oil revenues, government must ensure that scanners are working and weigh-stations provided at ports.

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