THE National Association of Government Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Murtala Muhammed Airport, Lagos has lamented the condition of its operating environment, which it described as tough, stressing that a lot of importers may close shop in the country this year.
Speaking recently on behalf of the association in Lagos, the Chairman, Segun Musa declared that government’s policy of using the Nigerian Customs had forced so many importers out of business in Nigeria while others had relocated out of the country in the last few months.

He alleged that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) had mismanaged the ports across the country, adding that the revenue leakage was more than the money collected into the coffers of the government.
Musa added that high import tariff by customs was not favourable to importers and had led to poor relationship between importers and the customs.

According to him: “Customs officers mismanaged the ports, they have not brought to table any meaningful policy that will actually drive the industry. Because they are saddled with the responsibility of checking revenue being collected by the freight forwarders, they actually mismanaged the ports. The revenue leakage is more than the revenue collected in Nigeria, the tariff on imports are so high and that has taken a lot of business out Nigeria”

“We have criticised the President Arrival Report that government should not saddle the customs with issuance of that certificate but the customs came with all kinds of snow whiting discuss that they won’t be any query again when they start issuing the Certificate”, he said.

He however, called on the federal government to engage private sector in policy formulations in order to get things right, noting that importation was not responsible for the demise of some major industries in the country but bad roads, insecurity and poor power generation.