The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) is partnering with Trade Modernisation Project Limited to deploy Gantry Scanners capable of scanning 200 containers per hour.
This is part of the massive deployment of state-of-the-art equipment across the nation’s ports under Custom’s Trade Facilitation Programme being spear-headed by the Comptroller-General, Mr. Adewale Adeniyi.
The General Manager of Trade Modernisation Project Limited, Mr. Ahmed Ogunsola, who led journalists on a facility-tour of the hub of the project, in Abuja, yesterday, said that the cutting-edge technology being put in place would make the long-awaited ports decongestion a reality.
His words, “with the state-of-the-art equipment being installed, we will cut the time containers spend at ports. We will cut the time NCS officers spend to treat documents by half.
At the Modernisation Hub located within the NCS Management Estate in Abuja, the GM said that the Information and Technology experts, including software developers, have been working long hours daily, to deliver a foolproof system that would make export and import businesses easy in the country.
When completed, the Unified Customs Management software, which would leverage on geospatial technology, Customers software experts were infused into the team of experts from the TMP Project limited.
According to Mr. Ogunsola, “A lot of people ask, why don’t you just buy something and come and give to the NCS. One of the things that we have to pay attention to is that you don’t just come and buy something and come and dump it, the problem with that is, if you buy something off the shelf and bring it, even if you train and train, if there is no sense of ownership, honestly, at the end of the day, it is dead. That is why a lot of technology projects failed.
What we have done is that from day one that the first code of that software was written, customs officers were involved. So it is not something that we bought and brought. The software you see here was designed, developed and being deployed from this room.
