Freight Forwarder Wants Commercial Motorcycle Ban in Apapa Reversed

Freight Forwarder Wants Commercial Motorcycle Ban in Apapa Reversed

By Eromosele Abiodun

Few weeks after the ban on commercial motorcyclists by the Lagos State government, freight forwarding group under the aegis of the Association of Concerned Freight Forwarders and Logistics (ACFFL) has accused the state government of the not considering the plight of the practitioners before coming up with such policy.

The Chairman of the group, Mr. Andy Omenogor, in a chat with newsmen in Lagos, maintained that if the Lagos state government had considered freight forwarder they would have exempted Apapa from the ban.

According to him, “Government has taken this our business to be a caricature business. Lagos State government never realised that we the freight forwarders are producing at least 30 per cent of the Internal Generated Revenue (IGR) of Lagos State. If they have appreciated that they would have exempted the ban on commercial motorcycle in Apapa.”

He stressed that it is unfair for freight forwarders to trek round Apapa in the course of doing their businesses.

Omenogor advised the state to adopt other strategies to checkmate the activities of commercial motorcyclists in the area rather than outright ban.
“You can strategies a way of doing that by making sure that all commercial motorcycles operating within Apapa are registered. You can go further by ensuring they have uniforms so that they can be controlled and not total ban, “he added.

Also, he decried the reduction in imports coming into the country stating that, “Nigerian imports have dropped they should tell us how many vessels are calling in Apapa ports now. Before now we used to have at least close to 3000 containers going out of the ports but now we don’t have up to 200 containers leaving the ports.”

Speaking on the recently announced revenue target for the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) by the customs command, he said the idea would encourage corruption in the system.

“Have you ever seen a world where the government gives task collectors target? It will encourage corruption and they will start giving freight forwarders unnecessary Debit Notes (DN).

“How can you give a revenue target instead of allowing them to work the way they have been working? It is only in Nigeria that such things will happen, the ones they have collected so far what have they been able to do with it?, “he said.

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