The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) senatorial candidate for Anambra Central, Chief Victor Umeh, has promised to sponsor a bill at the National Assembly to stop the incessant unnecessary harassment o South-East traders if he is elected during the March 28, 2015 election. Addressing members of the Electrical Appliances Dealers Market, Obosi in Idemili North Local Government Area, Umeh said that despite the routine checks and clearance by the men of the Nigeria Customs Service when goods arrive, South East traders still get harassed with checks at Ore and Benin in Ondo and Edo states respectively.

He assured the mammoth crowd that top on his priority if he makes it to the National Assembly would be to sponsor a bill that would permanently take Customs off the roads. He also said that that he was going to the Senate to ensure full implementation of the resolutions of the National Conference.

Umeh’s words: “All over the world, Customs men stay at the borders and at the ports. A situation where the men of the Customs will clear a container for delivery at the ports only to turn around and mount road blocks at Ore and Benin to extort south-easterners over the same containers they have cleared at the ports is unwholesome. If there was something wrong with the container, why did they clear it at the wharf?”

The APGA National Chairman stressed that he had successfully agitated for the immediate creation of an additional state in the South-East and the abolition of what he called the unjust practice of sharing federal revenue on the basis of number of local governments, a practice that puts the entire South-East in serious disadvantage. He lamented that while the five South-East states have just 95 local governments, Kano and Jigawa states alone have over 150 local governments.

•File photo shows Umeh fielding qustions from news men.

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