By Innocent Orok
Customs licensed Clearing agents and freight forewaders operating at Lagos ports are lamenting the inability to pay Customs duty and other taxes due to the downtime of Access Bank network which has lingered for days now without solution.
Access Bank is among the approved banks by the Nigeria Customs Service for payment of import duties and other taxes.
Speaking on behalf of the Agents, the National Publicity Secretary of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) Mr Emmanuel Onyeme in a chat with our Correspondent on Tuesday lamented that other duty collection banks are not having the downtime of their network service, but only Access Bank.
According to Onyeme, the network failures from Access Bank has caused cargoes to be trapped inside the ports, while demurrages continue to accrue on them.
The ANLCA spokesperson explained that Access Bank in its defence has also explained that the service downtime is due to hitches being experienced with the Nigeria Customs Service’s B’Odogwu trade platform.
According to Onyeme “The challenge started since Monday, 9am in the morning, even myself, I am a victim of it. I submitted some assessments and instructions for payment, I started by going to commercial road Apapa, they said its not working. I brought it down to Tin Can, they said its not working, since yesterday up till now, we could not make duty payments.
