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Stakeholders lament thriving corruption, low revenue in Customs
By FUNSHO OLOJO
In August, 2015, when President Mohammed Buhari announced the appointment of Col. Hameed Ali (ertd) as the Comptroller –General of Nigeria Customs Service, industry stakeholders were divided in their opinions on the propriety of such appointment.
While majority of the stakeholders, mainly Customs brokers, who were grief-stricken by the sudden turn of event, declared that the retired army chief was a misfit and would mess up the service.
They contended that the new CG may be a super hero in the army going by his antecedents, but feared that he would under-perform in the Customs that is highly technical.
They further claimed that these technicalities would be too cumbersome for his aging intellects to quickly grasp, a situation the officers in the service would use to their own advantage. However, others, who are in the minority, thought Ali, known for his strict moral rectitude, would bring the much need discipline and sanity to the service. Ali, on assumption of office in September, 2015 and during his maiden address to the top notchers of the Service, spoke with a swagger and an air of authority that was heavily tinged with large dose of arrogance.
‘’Mr President gave me a mandate. The mandate he has given me are three basic things: go to Customs, reform Customs, restructure Customs and increase the revenue generation, simple, I don’t think that is cumbersome. It is precise and I believe that is what all of you are here to do’’, Col. Ali said with air of superiority. One year after, the overwhelming consensus was that the Customs high chief has failed Mr President. They based their assessment on the three-point mandate he said informed his appointment to head the Customs: to reform, to restructure and increase revenue generation.
In October, the Minister of Finance, Mrs Kemi Adeosun, the supervising minister of the Customs Service, made a troubling observation on the Service which under pinned the performance of Col. Ali. He described Customs Officers whom the CG had the mandate to reform as ‘’cohesive crooks hard to break’’, an obvious reference to the convulsive corruption that now thrives under the watchful eyes of the no-nonsense retired army colonel Alarmed by the corrosive level of corruption in the Customs, the Senate recently, mandated its Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff to institute a probe into the operational activities of the service with a view to blocking the gaping holes in the revenue purse of the agency. Some stakeholders, especially the bemused freight forwarders, could not agree less with both the Minister and the Senators on the pervasive corruption in the customs.
‘’We are not saying there is no corruption in the Customs, as a matter of fact,corruption in the Customs is as old as the Service itself. ‘’But under the present leadership of Customs, corruption has taken a human form, walking on two legs. It has never been this bad.
‘’The officers took advantage of the ignorance of the CG on some of the technicalities of the operations of the service to become more daring in their extortion and exploitation of importers and their agents’’, a Lagos-based Customs broker observed. ‘’ He is an outsider. The more he looks, the less he sees’’, another freight forwarder interjected. Mrs Adeosun corroborated the ignorance state of the CG which his officers have now exploited to the maximum level to line their pockets. ‘’Col Hameed Ali is trying his best and instill some discipline but being an outsider in an insider’s place is a difficult job’’, the Minister observed, lending credence to the high level of novice status of the CG which has now fueled the current spate of sleaze in the Customs.
‘’When Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) first came in as the Comptroller- General of Customs, there was something akin to a celebration that sanity had finally arrived in the Port. What is the situation presently? ‘’ Some of us were skeptical from the onset, because Ali was never within the system. It would take an average of three good years for a non Customs officer of a particular rank, to understand the rudiments of what is going on in the Port. ‘’So, what do you expect from Ali, a retired soldier and at his age, to start learning what ‘classification’ is all about, because it is not by book. It is by practical experience. What Ali was supposed to be, is a symbol representing what we knew the President for. That is, if you are caught’’.
Prince Olayiwola Shittu, the National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents(ANLCA), observed. With the thriving corruption in the Customs despite the fabled high moral rectitude of the retired army colonel, stakeholders were unanimous in scoring the CG low in his first point mandate of reforming Customs. ‘’He has failed in that regard. He is far from reforming the Customs. The officers are far from being reformed’’, an importer based in Port-Harcourt declared in a derisive tone. Some critics therefore attempted to link the collapse of moral rectitude in the Customs to the dwindling revenue profile of the service under the present management.
‘’Apart from the recession which the top echelon of the service will readily and gladly attribute to the crash in the revenue generation in the service, the core cause of the problem is that more money now finds their way into private pockets than the one that goes to the government’’, another respondent claimed. The continued nose-diving in the customs revenue has become a source of concerns to the National Assembly that it has to mandate its Committee on Customs , Excise and Tariff to look into the loopholes through which government is losing billion of naira in Custom revenue. In a motion sponsored by Senator Isaac Alfa and 12 others, they raised a motion ‘’on urgent need to examine the operations of the Customs revenue drive’’
‘’The revenue short fall is a result of the unwholesome fraudulent trade malpractices, under-declaration, abuse of fiscal policies, concealment. Over and under-invoicing, false declaration of value and wrong classification’’, Senator Alfa noted. The law makers have every reason to worry about the dwindling revenue generated by Customs. As at June 2016, the Customs was able to rake in the sum of N385.7billion, from its revenue target of one trillion for the year.
By reasonable projection, the service would not come close to meeting its target this year. This inability of the present Customs management to meet one of its core mandates of Mr President was putting into reverse the huge gains of the service under the previous administration. Prior to the emergence of Ali as the CG, his substantive predecessor in office, Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko, carved a niche for Customs as one of the high revenue-yielding government agencies. Dikko met a monthly revenue profile of Customs when he came in 2009 of N30billion but left it at a princely sum of N100billion monthly when he finally left in 2015.
The revenue statistics from 2011 till 2015 will lend credence to the great descent the Customs revenue- generating ability has sunk. In 2011, the Customs raked in N741billion, N850billion in 2012, N833billion in 2013, N977billion in 2015 while it generated N903billion in 2015. The substantial amount of the 2015 revenue had been collected before Ali came in August ,that year, when the service eventually fell short of the N954billion target. Maritime experts, who are troubled by the development, blamed the down-turn in the revenue profile of the Customs to some of the policies and action of the present management.
They readily pointed to the scrapping of the fast track scheme and the issuance of Debit Notes(DN) which has now been substituted with outright seizures of goods. These policies, they noted, deprive the Federal government of the needed revenue.
They also observed that Pre-Arrival Assessment Report(PAAR), a scheme designed to encourage self-assessment that will fast track the process of goods clearance which the present Customs management inherited, has been bastardised . Customs brokers complained at a recent Stakeholders meeting at Apapa Port that PAAR is no longer used in the assessment system of Customs. They also complained of indiscriminate and incessant alert system that officers not only use to delay clearance process, but also used to freely extort hapless importers and their agents. ‘’These anti-trade policies have driven away genuine importers who now divert their cargo to the neigbouring ports from where they are smuggled into the country’’, a Customs licensed agent based in Onne, declared.
‘’More than the recession, these anti- trade policies of the present Customs management have helped to shrink the revenue profile of the service’’, another respondent noted. Some stakeholders therefore believed that Ali has also failed Mr President on the second point mandate of increased revenue generation. What could pass for restructuring the Customs, which is the third –point agenda given to the CG is the top Customs officers on the rank of Deputy Comptrollers- General and Assistant Comptrollers- General of Customs he sacked when he first resumed duties. He thereafter sacked few more officers, including those found to be high on drugs and other rank and file officers.
Before this time, some officers were also elevated to fill the vacant positions left by the sacked officers. From the level of concerns raised by stakeholders, especially the Minister of Finance, the Senators and the agitation Customs brokers over the eroding functions of the Customs, those who said the current CG is a square peg in a round hole can justifiably say’’ ‘’Awar woose fears have just been confamed’’ apology to an MTN advert line.
