The Management of Clarion Bonded Terminal has granted its customers a four-day waiver to ensure evacuation of their containers from the terminal.
The Legal Counsel of the terminal, Mr. Emmanuel Osonwa made this known on Monday on the sideline of the company’s management courtesy visit to the headquarters of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) in Lagos.
Osonwa said that the waiver was to ameliorate the suffering of its customers when the terminal was sealed by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
He said that as at the time of sealing the terminal, they had close to 4,000 containers and had no prior notice of closure of the terminal.
He said that the Controller KLT Customs Command on May 11 came and alleged that illegal activities were going on in the terminal and that Clarion did not have approval from the Customs Service to operate the bonded terminal.
Osonwa said that the terminal was sealed and the Customs Command wrote a letter to their headquarters that they had sealed the terminal pending the directive on what should be done.
He said that the KLT Customs Command noted that the terminal was only directed to handle empty container transactions.
Osonwa said that investigation was carried out which started from June 11 till July 3, saying that the COVID-19 pandemic made this slow for them.
He said that on July 4, the terminal was unsealed for business and all workers moved back to ensure that customers’ containers were evacuated.
He explained that this necessitated the granting of a waiver to help those who had concluded their papers.
According to him, this is done to enable customers who are ready to move their containers to do so.
“On our prompt opening for evacuation, nobody was called to pay any demurrage but you know that some customers will go and `sleep’ and so we notified them to come and take delivery of their containers.
“Those that were ready before the sealing will not pay any demurrage. Those of them that have not paid any duty will not fall into the ambit of people that are exempted.
“In fact, this week, we will still put two and two together to allow everybody to go but for somebody who is still `sleeping’ by the side, he will not be allowed.
“From the day the terminal was sealed to the day it was opened, we are giving additional four days because it will not be practicable for some people to tidy up what they should have done before the sealing of the terminal.
“Since opening on July 3, we worked July 4 and 5 and we are operating 24 hours to ensure that customers move their containers out,” he said.
Osonwa noted that the management wanted to assure the customers that they were still doing their timely and expeditious job before this happened, urging them to be mindful of ‘Act of Princes’.
He described the `Act of Princes’ as a term in maritime, one of the points that could lead to `force majeure’ in any contract in maritime shipping.
`Force majeure’ is unforeseeable circumstances that could prevent someone from fulfilling a contract.
“Customs’ actions rightly or wrongly, constitute what we call the Act of Princes. It is not our fault or making; we are doing our legal job and this happened,” he said.
Osonwa noted that customers already knew that some of their goods coming through the barges from Apapa were stalled when Customs Service gave the order and everything stopped.
He added that even the containers loaded on trucks before the sealing of the terminal were still at the port and only evacuated on July 4.
“We know Customs officers as people who want to maintain standards and some form of discipline in respect of their revenue.
“We knew we did not have any problem, so we decided to seek reasons for the sealing; even though we were not given any form of notice before that was done.
“We seek peace and we are glad that we are back to work,” he said
