Recent efforts by Nigerian commercial banks to upgrade and migrate their technology systems and electronic banking portals to supposedly higher and more robust platforms have led to the trapping of several cargoes at the Apapa and Tin-Can Ports.
In particular, Guaranty Trust Bank (GTBank), Zenith Bank Plc, First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) and Unity Bank, among others witnessed persistent disruption of transactions, especially to most online services due to the upgrade of their electronic banking portals to the extent that some individual account holders could not withdraw or deposit money from and into their accounts for several weeks.
The Trumpet can report that apart from individuals experiencing difficulties transacting in their personal accounts, several import units of containers have not been cleared at the ports because their clearance documents are still trapped in some banks due to ongoing network migration issues.
Also in most of the banks, payments to vendors who supply items or render one service or the other, have stalled for weeks, causing severe strains on the finances of those in that segment of the financial services sector.
Responding to the situation, National President of the Africa Association of Professional Freight Forwarders and Logistics of Nigeria (APFFLON), Frank Ogunojemite, lamented that the reason most jobs are stuck is because the moment an agent captures a job in a bank, he cannot move the job to another bank even if First Bank network is bad for instance.
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“The clearance of cargoes at the ports usually goes through Form M and the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR). For you to begin the clearance process, the transaction has to go through a commercial bank because you have to pay your Customs duty.
“If the banking system or network is down, then there is no way you can pay for Customs duty, and if that is the case, then the container will remain in the port accumulating rent which comes with storage and demurrage payments.
“If this kind of situation persists, then there is no way prices of goods can come down because cargoes are spending longer time in the ports due to disruptions to banking services.
“Government should introduce what is called a ‘compensatory law’ where importers are given waivers when delay to their cargoes in the ports is not from them. Most of the banks will tell us that they apologize for the network disruptions, but the question is: Does this apology make any sense to the cargo clearance chain?
“There should be a compensatory law where cargo owners are given waivers due to issues beyond them that delay cargoes inside the ports.
“There was a time when the Unity Bank system was down for weeks and then it became the turn of Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB), as well as First Bank of Nigeria (FBN) and Zenith Bank, which is still ongoing in most cases. Most of the banks have been upgrading and migrating their systems to higher versions and this is telling on cargo clearance,” he stated.
