By Sandra Chukwunyere
The Customs Area Controller of the Lillypond Export Command, Comptroller Ajibola Odusanya has said that the command handles nothing else than 70 percent of the tonnage value of export going out of Nigeria.
Odusanya who disclosed this during a Roundtable with the members of the Maritime Reporters’ Association Of Nigeria, MARAN at the International Press Centre, Apapa in Lagos on Thursday, argued that if South West, especially Lagos was responsible for 70 percent of Customs duty, it would be right for one to say that Lillypond Export Command was responsible for nothing less than 70 percent of the tonnage value of export going out of Nigeria.
Insisting that there was no other Export Command in the whole of the South West region, even in the whole Nigeria, he disclosed that the command was created as solely export command to handle export goods in 2022 and was headed by Comptroller Babandede.
Tracing the evolution of the command, Odusanya said, “At that period of its creation, although the command was handling only export, the command was not the sole export command at that time. The other commands around the port were still handling part of the export goods around here. We have export seats in Apapa, Tincan, PTML and even Lekki.
“But due to the directive from the government through PEBEC and pressures from other government agencies like the Nigerian Export Promotion Council and the Nigerian Ports Authority, there came a Memorandum of Understanding between the NPA and the customs to streamline all export processes to a command hence the Lillypond Export Command became the sole export command around the South West around July 2024. It was in July 2024 that the command became the only command processing sea bound export around Apapa area.”
He went on to inform that following the successful designation and take off of the Lillypond Export Command as the sole export processing command in Nigeria, other government agencies like the Department of State Services, DSS, Nigeria Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, Nigerian Agriculture Quarantine Service among others deployed their officers dedicated to export to the Lillypond Export command.
“Before this arrangement, goods treated by maybe the NDLEA officers at Lillypond, on getting to Apapa or Tincan, you still have another NDLEA officers stopping them. That was the practice before, but with the collapse and also with the synergy that we have with other government agencies, goods treated by any government agency’s official at Lillypond now, no other officer of that particular agency will stop that container on its way to the port.
“Even customs, before the collapse, when export goods treated by Lillypond were moving to the port, Apapa and Tincan Ports export seat officers and their Enforcement Officers will still be stopping those containers either at the gate or inside the port. But now, we don’t have anything like that.
“Export goods treated by Lillypond, given the gate in, given their Eto to enter the port, will only be checked by Lillypond officers at the port gate to confirm that they have been duly treated in the office. And that checking does not mean that they will open the container, unless it is extremely necessary, maybe, based on intelligence. This is because jobs treated in the office are sent to our officers at the port gate online.
“Those coming by water because we have some exports coming by barges into the port too, it is the same process. Just as we have our officers at the gate, we also have our officers at the jetty. So, the place is so sanitized and automated that export goods now move seamlessly into the port either through road or through water”, he explained.
On the relationship between the command and the Nigerian Railway Corporation, NRC, the Controller said, “We have goods being moved by rail from outside Lagos to this place. Some come as far as from the North. We have this understanding with the customs commands outside here that goods coming by rail especially those already examined by our colleagues outside Lagos, they have a way of sending a message to us online and from there we do the shipping note and send everything into the port and may be message to the terminal operators, we don’t stop them because they have been examined by those people and they have sent the report to us.
“So, that is the synergy we have with our colleagues especially from the North. We have this understanding with Kano/Kaduna command.
“Recently, I heard that some containers will be moving from Oyo State too. I told you that our officers used to go as far as Ondo State, maybe Oyo/Osun, some of those containers there may move to the port through rail. We have already told them, the one we have not done, the command that did or are doing the thing, will always send the message to our command, if not, they won’t be able to access the port because they recognized only our command as the command that will issue the shipping note that they will use to enter the port.”
