Not less than five foreign airlines including Are currently under investigations for airlifting contraband cargoes into Nigeria . A yet-to-be ascertained quantity of contrabands running into millions of Naira were early last week intercepted at the Muritala Mohammed International Airport , Ikeja , Lagos .
The airlines were said to have airlifted the prohibited goods into the country late in the night or in the early hours of the day when Security checks and other activities at the Airport were at a Low ebb.
The activities of the affected foreign airlines became Public last Tuesday when two airlines loaded with prohibited goods landed at the cargo terminal of Muritala Mohammed International Airport , Lagos .
This led men and officers of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Federal Operations Unit (FOU), Ikeja , Lagos to storm the Customs Warehouses at the Airport , an action which took their counterparts at the Airport by surprise.
Apart from the disruption of movements at the Airport , the invasion by the men of the FOU caused contrabands offloaded from different aircrafts to litter the apron, just as the warehouses of NCS were filled with the goods.
The Import Manager of one of the foreign airlines in an interview with journalists at the cargo terminal of the Airport confirmed that the five foreign airlines were involved in the importation of prohibited goods into the country.
Conducting journalists round the warehouses at the Airport where the contrabands were kept at the weekend, the Comptroller General of Customs, Elder Jacob Gyang Buba stated that investigations into the circumstances surrounding the importation of the prohibited items into the country have started.
in earnest and All those involved will be brought to book at the end of NCS findings.Though he declined to disclose the identities of the importers and the Value of the goods, Buba who did the inspection of the contrabands with other top echelon of the NCS high command in Abuja stated that there was need for All the Government units and Security Agencies at the Airport to join hands together and ensure that they get to the root of the matter.His words: “With what I have seen here, I am of the firm Belief that we All need to be in a round table with the officials of SACHOL, NACHOL, FAAN and the airlines to ensure sanity in the System . Even from what you can see here, it is very clear that the facilities on ground Are very inadequate. Besides, documentation here is definitely not satisfactory. This is because whether goods come by land, Air or sea, there is what we call the manifest. And there is nothing magical about it. The manifest is the compilation of All the individual waybills, bills of lading, or Road waybills into a booklet form, and a declaration by the ship captain, pilot or driver that this is a compilation of the cargoes I am carrying. That is why in our Books of operations, it is the captain of the ship, the pilot of the aircraft or the driver of the truck that is expected to submit the manifest to us. “We Are expected to get an advance copy of the manifest from the agents or Shipping lines so that we can key them into our System and then when individual importers or Shipping lines come to lodge their single goods declaration Forms , they will also attach their own airway bills or bill of lading, as the case may be. Even with the ASYCUDA2.7 that we Are phasing Out, we still capture All these documentations appropriately”, Buba said.Apparently reacting to the insinuations in some quarters that the fight among his officers and men have disrupted economic activities in the airports, the Customs boss said “it was not the intentions of NCS in anyway to disrupt operations because it has grave consequences on the economy.“The key thing we have been stressing All over the years is compliance. In fact, it is one of the fallouts of our recent two day retreat in Lagos . You will realize that compliance was Central to our discussion at the retreat. Compliance by the importers, banks, agents, concessionaires, customs, indeed, everybody in the maritime Industry have to comply. And the moment there is no compliance by any of these stakeholders, then there will be a disruption in the System .”