14th March, 2018
The Customs Area Controller, Tin-Can Island Command, Mohammed Baba-Musa, has directed that any dispute between port operators be resolved within six hours to facilitate trade.
Addressing newsmen on Wednesday in Lagos, the customs controller said that incessant disputes between port operators was an endemic issue in the command.
“Before my redeployment to the command, the dispute resolution committee was meeting twice a week to deliberate on conflicts arising from valuation, clarification, Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) and so on.
“As a pointer to our renewed enthusiasm for trade facilitation, I have directed that all issues arising from dispute must be attended to with dispatch.
“Meaning, no dispute should remain unresolved after six hours and the dispute resolution committee had been directed to sit on daily basis for quick resolution of issues,” he said.
READ: Immigration generates N38.5bn, $29.9m 2017 – Report
Baba-Musa said that he had re-engineered and domiciled the command’s help desk in the office of the area’s public relations officer (PRO).
“The PRO is the Deputy Dispute Resolution Officer while I am the Chief Dispute Officer on Help Desk, ‘’ Baba-Musa said.
He said that the command would kick off deployment of Nigeria Integrated Customs Information System (NICIS) 11 to block all revenue leakages and meet its yearly target of N356 billion.
According to Baba-Musa, the command has so far collected N62 billion this year.
Also speaking, the National PRO of Customs, Joseph Attah, solicited the media’s continued collaboration with the service to enable it achieve its mandate.
Attah said the media would benefit from training by the service to enable journalists understand its operations as the service prepared to migrate to NICIS 11.