The Abia Shippers Association (ASA), an umbrella body of importers, exporters and customs licensed agents in Abia State, has decried the deplorable state of roads in the South-East region of the country and urged for urgent rehabilitation of the roads to improve ease of doing business in the region.
In a communiqué issued after its 2nd annual general meeting (AGM) held in Aba, the group also urged the Nigerian Government to urgently dismantle all customs road blocks on major roads in the region to stop illegal activities of officials of the Customs Department.
Alex Adaelu, president of ASA, said in an interview with BusinessDay that the area of duty of the Nigerian Customs is in the sea-ports and country’s territorial borders. He urged the Federal Government to put pressure on the department to withdraw from highways.
‘The area of duty of the Customs is the ports and around the border areas. It is illegal for them leave those confines and come on the highways to impound containerized goods,” Adaelue said. “A situation whereby a container is duly released by the Customs at the ports and another Custom official on the highway stops the same container for another round of checks is embarrassing and unacceptable.”
Adaelue said: “There is nowhere in the world that such happens and if we must put international best practices in our business, we must make sure that we dismantle these operations that are not legal.”
To achieve ease of doing business in the South-East and South-South regions of the country, he also urged the Federal Government to rehabilitate all federal roads in the regions.
According to him, the Enugu-Port Harcourt express road is in a deplorable condition, similar. To the Enugu-Onitsha and Aba-Ikot Ekpene express roads. Containers overturn on the roads daily and so for Government to achieve ease of doing business in this part of the world, Government has to get those roads in order.
The ASA boss he also advised artisans in Aba to move into clusters approved by Government to grow their businesses.
“Usually we blame Government for so many things, but I will like to differ a little bit today. I blame individual entrepreneurs for some of their challenges, be it garment or shoe. I want them to be in a cluster.
“We have put pressure on Government to bring out a land where all of them should locate. For instance, if their problem is power, you don’t expect government to buy generator for each member, but when they locate in a particular environment, Government can buy energy and it will reach all of them. So, we are telling them to avail themselves with the opportunity Government has provided to move to location, where they can access amenities.
“Again, they cannot access loans from banks, because most of them do not have adequate collateral cover, but if they are in a cluster, all of them can team up and provide collateral and access funds.
“When they come together like that, they will have strength and we can compete with the Asian Tigers and produce goods that will go all over the world and hat is our emphasis, “he observed.
One of the high points of the event was the award of excellence, bestowed on 7 trustees of the association for their immense contributions towards the growth of the association.
GODFREY OFURUM, Aba
