| … declared it saved vessel masters N3.2bn in 7 months
… as MWUN warns dockworkers against collaboration with corrupt Customs officers
The Port Standing Task Team (PSTT) has accused officers of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) of illegally taking samples during cargo examination. This is just as it disclosed that foreign vessel masters calling at the nation’s ports would have lost not less than N3.2 billion to bribery and other illegalities in a period of seven months in 2022.
PSTT explained that corrupt government officials boarding vessels at the Apapa and Tin Can Island port terminals in Lagos were in the habit of delaying these vessels unnecessarily while also making various forms of illegal demands on the vessel masters.
Coordinator of the PSTT, Comrade Moses Fadipe, making this disclosure at a recent working visit of the team to the secretariat of the Maritime Workers Union of Nigeria (MWUN) in Olodi-Apapa, Lagos, stated that the said amount was the sum of all the extortions that would have taken place between 3rd of March 2021 and 26th of November 2021.
Fadipe explained that prior to this time, in 2020, it took an average of seven to ten days to resolve issues with masters of vessels with government officials and within that time, the ship master pays $20,000 per day.
He however said that with the intervention of the PSTT, the duration dropped to an average of one to four hours, implying that the amount of money paid also dropped considerably.
Apart from these, Fadipe said the infractions against Nigerian officials at the port in 2020 totaled 161, but in 2021 it reduced to only 21, “and this is what PSTT has saved the nation,” he said.
He further said the team has also reduced the number of government officials boarding vessels at berths, adding that unlike before, vessel waiting time has reduced reasonably because within an hour of arrival, the vessels must break bulk.
His words: “From 3rd of March 2021 up till 26th of November 2021, we were able to save vessel masters demurrage of N3.2 billion which has never happened in this country.
“With this, all masters of vessels all over the world now send Pre-arrival notification to Nigeria, meaning that before they berth in Nigeria, they must have given us a notice of when they would arrive.
“As our government officials start boarding these vessels, they are letting us know in real time what they are requesting for.”
Fadipe also said that NCS and other officials of other agencies are culpable of illegally taking large quantities of product samples during cargo examination and they are never returned to the importers.
He advised the dockworkers who turned out en masse at the MWUN Secretariat, on the occasion of the visit, to avoid being used by Customs officers and other government agencies to convey these illegal samples out of the port.
Speaking further on illegal same taking, he said: “In the port terminal every day, government officials go home with product samples, we know that some agencies are allowed to take samples and we know the quantity they ought to carry, but what we are saying now is commercial quantity, and you will never see these officers carrying it by themselves, they always use dockworkers to carry it, I am begging you to please, don’t carry samples for anyone again.
“I have met with the Customs highest authorities and at the command level and I have told them that nobody will carry samples for any officer again.
“We have made seizures in the last four months and have filled two twenty foot containers to the brim within two months, we seize samples every day.
“We have a form called the same form, and we now compelled them to fill that form, and ask them to go and call the official that owns the sample, but they would never show up.
“We are reaching a stage now whereby we would be arresting anyone caught with such samples. “Anyone that is being victimised for refusing to convey samples for any government official should report to the PSTT and to the MWUN Secretariat.”
Fadipe appealed to the MWUN leadership on the need for the union to work together with the Task Team by way of information sharing, saying the team is equally ready to provide the shield needed in covert operations.
The PSTT coordinator announced that MWUN under the leadership of Comrade Adewale Adeyanju has been drafted into the Port Standing Task Team and in the next forty eight hours, a letter to that effect would be conveyed to the union to confirm its status.
In his response, President General of MWUN, Comrade Adewale Adeyanju, promised that the union is committed to work with the PSTT in order to bring sanity to the Nigerian Port system.
He stressed that the PSTT would bring efficiency to the port and to the dockworkers better than before. Adeyanju confirmed that the practice of conveying samples on behalf of government officials is giving the union a bad name and stated that it has stopped forthwith.
He equally warned that any member of the union caught working in collaboration with drug peddlers automatically loses his membership of the union.
“Part of what you see today is what we have been doing in the past in terms of sensitisation, we would continue to speak to our members and educate them, they must not be used by any agency to carry things that does not belong to them,” he said. | |
