By Brave Dickson
Car dealers in Rivers State have advised the Nigeria Customs Service to be efficient at the nation’s borders and desist from using any guise to seal off their car marts.
The dealers who made this known through their Chairman, Motor Dealers Association, Rivers State Chapter, Mr Edyson Umeh told our correspondent that the nation’s seaports which the federal government had told them to be using when importing cars are highly corrupt.
Mr Umeh who also doubles as the national public relations officer of the association said the sealing of car marts by customs is not patriotic and appealed to the federal government to have a rethink and do the right thing.
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He said: “If customs really want to do its work, it should be efficient at the borders and equip its men adequately. Coming to check cars in dealers’ shops is not the proper thing to do.
“Customs said it wants cars to now be coming through seaports, not land borders. A lot of fraud is going on at the seaports. Things are not in order in Nigerian seaports. We have seen many instances where importation of cars was made through seaports and necessary payments were made to clearing agents and Customs, yet the cars were not properly cleared.
“We feel being humiliated. Federal Government is pushing us to the wall but we still want dialogue in order for things to be seen the way they are supposed to be. We don’t want the locking of our shops by the government again under any guise including duty. So, we are pleading with them to allow us to do our business.
“Unfortunately for us, we woke up one morning last month, only for us to see our shops being closed down by officials of the Nigeria Customs. Though they didn’t come in the night to close car marts in Rivers State as they did in other states like Lagos.
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“We were in our car shops carrying out our usual legitimate business when Customs officials started sealing our shops. Being good citizens, we the association of car dealers did not revolt. We only went to them to know why they carried out such anti-business actions against us but they told us that the orders came from Customs national headquarters.
“We were told that the orders were for the checking of cars that do not have duty in car marts nationwide. We started pleading with them to unseal our shops. They did their verifications on our cars and found out that all the cars in our shops have duties and our shops were eventually opened. But I learnt that some shops are still closed till date especially in Lagos State.
“I think, Lagos State car dealers are threatening to drag Customs to court but we will not use litigation. We are only leaning on God to bring us out of this mess. Customs believes that cars are still being smuggled into this country but God knows that we are innocent.”
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