Lawmakers give Customs two-week ultimatum to reduce cargo clearing stages

The House of Representatives Committee on Customs has given the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) two weeks to reduce its 18 cargo clearing stages to four, so as to decongest the nation’s ports.

The committee, which made the resolution on Tuesday, in Abuja, after an interactive session with stakeholders, insisted that the Comptroller General of Customs should appear in person to explain the processes.

According to the Chairman of the committee, Rep. Leke Abejide (SDC-Kogi) the process should be limited to the offices of the Comptroller Area Commander (CAC), Deputy Comptroller Revenue (DCR), Officer in Charge of Bond and then Gate.

He said that all other stages should be removed to allow for free flow of activities in the ports, describing them as avenues for illegal transactions by corrupt officers of the service.

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“Once it gets to the CAC, the CAC should minute it directly to the Deputy Comptroller Revenue, from there, it goes to Officer in Charge of Bond and then to the Gate for exit.

“We have to do something about this, let us bring down these procedures to four stages; somebody is getting revenue illegally, but if we do this, we will cut away all these illegalities and the revenue goes to government,’’ he said.

The chairman said that the committee would not work on the Custom’s 2022 budget, if provisions were not made to fix all the scanners at the ports.

He said that government had invested over $420 million dollars on the scanners and the committee would not allow such investment to go down the drain.

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