A chieftain of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Sir Jude Maduka, has advocated for the abolition of Direct Trader’s Input (DTI) cafes with a view to ensuring that genuine Customs licenses are not used to commit fraudulent release of containers at the ports.
A member of the Customs Consultative Committee (CCC), Maduka bared his mind in a chat with SHIPS & PORTS DAILY on the sidelines of the inaugural capacity building programme organised for the CCC members at the Zone ‘A’ Headquarters, Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Ikeja, Lagos.
Maduka lamented that Customs licenses were allegedly being used by DTI operators to commit fraud, even without the knowledge of the owners.
“In the interim, there is this problem of control we have been battling with. Sometimes, license owners don’t even know when their licenses are been used to commit some certain fraud.It is about imputing numbers; all you need do is just to mention the person’s number and it will be imputed. And at the end of the day, the license will be blocked and you will not be aware,” he said.
He explained that in order to ensure control, private licenses should not be issued to DTI cafes, noting that every license owner should be held responsible for every documentation of a consignment that the Customs queries, rather than leaving it open for anybody to capture data.
“When owners of licenses input data by themselves, they will be responsible for whatever fraudulent act is committed with the licenses and it will be easier for Customs to nip some of these problems and know where they are coming from,” he said.
Maduka expressed the hope that when the Service finally takes over total implementation of the destination inspection regime, such sharp practices will be corrected.
Copyright Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.