Urgent Need For Ministry Of Finance To Scrap Or Merge KLT Customs Area Command With Other Ports
By John Kennedy Ikemefuna
In my 20 years of studying the KLT Customs Area Command, I have observed that the Command has been nothing but a waste of Federal Government resources instead of serving as a facilitator of the port economy.
Despite its large land mass, available space, and inland waterways that could support the mother ports, it has been 98 percent idle every year for the past 20 years. This is a significant economic waste. The Command employs not fewer than 120 officers, maintains the full hierarchy found at mother ports, and operates similar offices and vehicles, yet produces no meaningful results.
In fact, the land area is larger than Tincan Island Port; therefore, if Tincan generates an average of ₦100 billion per month, the KLT Area Command—with the capacity of Phases 1, 2, 3, and 4 and with over 10 bonded terminals outside KLT—should not be struggling to generate only ₦3 billion monthly. The Ministry of Finance can easily confirm this from the Command’s monthly returns for the past 20 years.
If I am wrong, and the Command is maintained with the same salaries and emoluments as other ports yet remains inefficient, the Ministry should urgently scrap the KLT Customs Area Command and merge all bonded terminals under it with the Tincan Island, PTML, and Apapa Ports Customs Area Commands to improve efficiency.
Besides the Command’s idleness, the persistent port congestion in Lagos, port inefficiency, high operational costs, and long cargo dwelling times can be directly linked to the redundancy of the KLT Command. Some actors behind this economic sabotage will argue that non-transfer of cargoes to KLT is due to additional costs, but the cost of port congestion—customer delays retrieving cargo, high demurrage charges, and delayed ship berthings—is far greater than the cost of moving cargoes to KLT. In short, this is why the mother ports are over-stressed and inefficient.
At nearby Cotonou Port, once a vessel berths, cargoes are moved directly to terminals outside the port while only limited cargoes remain inside, minimizing vessel berthing delays. Cargoes are distributed to terminals for easy access and clearance by importers’ agents.
Three Major Reasons KLT Customs Command Remains Inefficient And Redundant
From my 20 years of experience, the Apapa and Tincan Island Ports Customs Area Commands have been reluctant to redirect cargoes to the KLT Area Command, except for the few terminals under their direct control, citing fear of revenue loss. I wonder whether the revenue collected belongs to the Apapa and Tincan Island Commands alone or to the Federation Account.
This corruption must stop. The authorities in charge should be made to understand that distributing cargoes efficiently will reduce congestion, allow customers faster access to their goods, and lower demurrage costs.
Complacency Of KLT Area Command To Its Idleness
I see the complacency of officers in the KLT Area Command as another cause. This may result from salaries and emoluments being paid on time regardless of performance; whether they work or not, they are paid.
No private investor would allow idle branches to exist without producing output. The Area has been managed by officers who do not care whether they work because they act as if nothing is missing. They contribute little to port operations while supervising idle bonded terminals that are privately funded and receive no grant from the Federal Government. It is no wonder terminals under them are declining daily.
Customs Authority Failure To Address The Problem
It has become a culture for successive Heads of Customs over the past 20 years to ignore this problem. This appears deliberate, beyond their control, or a failure of the system. Who will correct this abnormality? I have learned that petitions and complaints have gone unaddressed for two decades. The Customs Authority should recognize that customs services are central to ease of doing business. No matter how much technology is deployed, without efficient cargo distribution, ease of doing business at the ports cannot be achieved.
Technology cannot work in isolation. Visit efficient foreign ports and you will observe cargoes being distributed to avoid congestion and to improve accessibility. The Head of Customs cannot pretend not to know about the problem at KLT, because they have records showing monthly revenue compared with other ports, port congestion while the Command remains idle, and the cost of running an unproductive system.
Conclusion
As a concerned Nigerian, 20 years of waste is no longer acceptable—especially under a government that claims to be reversing decades of inefficiency. I therefore suggest to the Honourable Minister of Finance that the idle KLT Customs Area Command be immediately scrapped and the bonded terminals under it repositioned to serve Apapa and Tincan Island ports, or that the customs systems at the ports be restructured to integrate the KLT Customs Area Command and its terminals into port-support functions to improve ease of doing business in Nigeria’s ports.