Shittu: Adeniyi Has Ended God-fatherism in Customs, Enthroned Professionalism
Shittu
EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
It was obvious that over the years, industry stakeholders, particularly freight forwarders, were not happy about the appointment of non-career officers as Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS). It was therefore good news to the stakeholders when the administration of President Ahmed Bola Tinubu announced a serving career officer, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, as the Comptroller-General of the Service last year. In this exclusive interview with SHIPPING DAY, former President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Prince Olayiwola Shittu, while welcoming Adeniyi’s appointment says he has so far gladdened the heart of stakeholders by bringing about professionalism in Customs and ending the era of god-fatherism in the Service. Shittu speaks on a number of industry issues, including how training of freight forwarders along with customs officers will impact positively on trade facilitation and address some trade malpractices in the system. Excerpt…
What is your reaction to the appointment of Wale Adeniyi as CG of Customs and his performance so far?
The new Comptroller General of Customs, fortunately for us, his appointment has justified the clamour of the maritime stakeholders requesting that all agencies of government should be headed by practitioners within the agencies. Several times, we have been disappointed when outsiders are brought in to head government agencies without the background and spend the whole half of their tenure learning on the job. But in this case, having been headed by retired soldiers, not once, but twice and headed by even a veterinary doctor, we wished and prayed that one day God will make it possible for the federal government to appoint a seasoned officer who has gone through the ranks. And it becomes a bit easier for us to justify that appointment when the immediate past CGC was a retired Army officer who took over from a seasoned officer of the customs thereby leaving a very big gap in the administration of customs irrespective of the efforts put forward to make it look as if the right thing had been done. So, he (Adeniyi) coming in, that his background has spoken for him. That is why you discover that since he got into office, a lot of activities germane to the Nigerian customs have been carried out and being carried out. Another kudos is that himself, being a public relations practitioner professionally, it had given him an opportunity to show himself to the public on why he is fit for the job. And he has not been disappointing. The reason being that he is reaching out to all stakeholders, he is accepting responsibility where officers are found wanting and he has been keeping officers on their toes. He has made die-hard officers and stakeholders who do not want change in the industry to embrace change for the better. He has been able to within a very short time marry the unmarriageable trade facilitation and revenue generation. Because we have known that if you want to go for trade facilitation, you cannot tie it to how much money generated by customs. They are opposite. But he has been preaching that we can achieve that without necessarily destroying one platform for the other. He has not got it fully right but I know it has been a sing-song for him along the way that it is possible and it is doable. That approach itself endeared him to all practitioners, especially from my own sector. It is not easy to really judge him now because of the short period he has stayed so far and the impact he has made. I am sure by the time he will be doing his first one year in office, a proper appraisal can be put in place. But so far, he has not been disappointing.
In what areas would you give him kudos since his appointment?
He has done well in the administration of customs, that is number one. Officers now approach their jobs professionally unlike when god-fatherism was at stake. And leaders of customs administration were unapproachable. And it became obey the last order. Now, a lot of training is being put in place which I will tell you honestly when officers are trained, they perform better. And it is not just one off thing, it is continuous. And one other thing he has done that no other CGC did is reaching back to retired officers, bring them together to get them to talk how they did it when they were in office. He needs them as a reservoir of knowledge. And reaching back at all is a very good step. So I know that we stakeholders, all of us, terminals, customs brokerage, they are looking on to him to solve their individual problems. It is very hard road to pass. But I know if he takes it one after the other, he will surely get there. So, it is really difficult to assess him fully now, but I foresee the future being well. He has agreed that he will be involved in training customs brokers and that is number one. When a customs officer is well trained and the customs agent is trained, there will not be any lacuna in the operations of the customs brokerage. For the first time, we have seen the CGC who is available, who reaches out to people. And public relations officers in all the commands are now up and doing. And irrespective of that, their revenue level is going higher which means you can do trade facilitation and still get to your target not by making obnoxious demand on the importer but rather educating all of us, the agents, importers on the need to do things right. I give him kudos on that level.
It has been noticed that despite all the huge seizures by the Customs, we still notice that some people are unrepentant, does this mean that the advice by associations of customs agents to their importers is not being taken seriously?
It is unfortunate that Nigeria is a road way now as a smuggling route. And the smuggling we are talking about is boldly performed. Because those days, you don’t smuggle through the ports, you go to the bush and smuggle, you are caught but now as it is experienced abroad, including America, they are battling smuggling because these cartels are so powerful and the power is not based on the fact that some of them are not identified. I give you example, if you go to the airport, in fact, when you hear the huge number of seizures going on in the port, you will be wondering, you mean some people will just take the bull by the horn to smuggle hard drugs, under-declaration and want to do whatever it is that is not allowed. The reason is that if you don’t get corruption out of people, it is not easy for a corrupt person to change, to say, I am no longer corrupt. Once they get into them, they fine-tune, no matter the obstacles you put on the way, they find a way to go about it. That is why this smuggling thing gets intense in the last one or two years. You see that Nigeria is now being seen as a road map being used by cartels as trading route to supply heroine to Asians and Arabian countries. You will always know that the final destination of all these drugs are not African countries. And it has to do with money. It is not only the customs themselves that are fighting smuggling, there is law that says any vessel that brings prohibited items should be impounded. How many vessels have you been able to impound ? Because when these goods are landed, they are kept in storage with the terminal operators. Terminal operators will not risk their businesses by allowing their terminals to be used for smuggling, but some how smuggled goods appear which means that the foreign end, the freight forwarders over there who know what they are loading, that is where this smuggling really occurs. It is when it is able to pass through here, for example , they said a warehouse full of drugs in Ikorodu, you know a lot of people heard that story, the one in Lekki too. Now, it passed through the ports, it is not impossible. You cannot block routes totally. Out of 100 containers, it is possible five or six may be carrying hard drugs. It must have passed, that is why it was able to get to Ikorodu. So, all of us must be involved . We tell our customs brokers, you must know your clients. Gone are days somebody will claim, eh, I was in a hotel, they called me, to come and take this Bill of Lading. No, no. That is not an excuse. And they are now being treated just like the smugglers themselves. But the more we get the judicial process involved not when they arrest a smuggler, they now arraign him and before you know it, they say, within the two, three days, they say due to due diligence the person comes back to the ports still doing the same business. So there must be a way to harness the efforts of the customs agents, the training of the customs brokers and judicial intervention. You remember when Hassan Bello was the Head of Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), he had this annual judicial meeting. And for a very long time, customs was not getting directly involved, other than to be invited to listen, looks for a low level officer who attends. No. There must be a way when that operation of getting judiciary involved should be with customs, NSC and along the line with NIMASA. NIMASA is for the safety of vessels coming to Nigeria. But if those vessels coming to Nigeria are seen to be aiding and abetting, bringing in prohibited items through the ports, then they are supposed to be involved. If you imagine the impact of these agencies coming together, then you will know that judges or magistrates who are involved in fining or getting those people indicted will now take it more serious than just giving sentences as if they are petty thieves. It is very very important. The Customs broker is a victim because the majority of the importers don’t get the customs brokers involved from the word go. And let me tell you, from the beginning all imports are supposed to be by Form M, in days gone by, it was the customs broker that prepared Form M on behalf of the importer. He is the one that does classification to make sure there is no under-declaration etc etc. But along the line, the same customs succumbed to the pressure from the banking industry that no, there is our client who knows about the funding, they start preparing Form M, And Form M is the first level of declaration for any cargo that is coming in. They now do the form m declaration, they get the invoices and approvals from agencies including those fake items that are being brought in because Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) must give certification before you now approach customs. The bank approaches Customs for the declaration and customs will now issue PAAR (Pre-Arrival Assessment Report). As at that time, the customs broker is not involved. It is when that PAAR is issued and the declaration the importer has made is written there that the customs broker will say, let me go and make declaration. They now go to the traders portal which is one step to the customs main portal. You now do declaration on behalf of the importer. From that time, you are culpable. Even, if you don’t know anything at all. Because in most cases, when they are doing examination of your declaration, that they find out this thing is containing this, this one is not well provided, and you now hold the customs broker first to go and look for the importer. So, if you don’t know your importer from the word go, from the beginning, how do you lay your hands on that importer? So these are part of the training we are asking the customs to involve customs brokers. As they train their officers to detect, train our people too. Now that customs agents are faced with the new act, with the amended CEMA, customs agents are now customs representatives. Am sure many people don’t even know that. Before agents are seen as the responsibility of the importer. But you are now customs representatives which means you must know your onions. You must be able to classify properly. Sometimes, some of us see PAAR , we know there is error in it. We don’t wait until we go to the field to go and do examination. We send importer to go and amend the PAAR because it is not supposed to be five percent , it is supposed to be 10 percent. If you don’t amend it now, when it gets to the field, they will now discover it and penalize you with 25 percent. No importer wants to hear that he is going to pay more that he has already declared. So, that training is what we need. You say why is our association no doing training, we do training, but how many people will be involved in training . But if customs has a training programme in place and there are courses you must attend or one of your educated staff must attend to enable you renew your licence, people will not run away from it. We are not even saying customs must pay for the training because in those days, we used to pay and invite customs to train us. We need to find a way out of that. Am sure our association is working hand in hand with the CGC to set that in place, including the customs themselves setting up institutes of customs brokerage. It is in Britain, India, South Korea. These are countries we have visited to look at how customs brokers operate. It is like their Siamese twins. Most of the conflicts we are having concerning our operations, you don’t find there. You will see customs representatives attending the same course. If you are talking about security imperatives in cargo clearance, and that is a training from customs for customs officers, why cannot agents also attend such courses as representatives and have the same knowledge as customs officers. It makes life easier for importers. Those are part of the things we are asking from the new CGC.
It is often said that smuggling cannot be booming without the involvement of some unscrupulous officers, what do you think the CGC or the management of the customs can do to check this?
There is something you need to take note of, smuggling through the border is different from smuggling through the ports. Smuggling through the border is when some people are physically carrying some prohibited items, drugs across the borders and we expect that officers will be manning the borders. Probably they are collecting something to close their eyes, let it pass. That is not easy to control. Most officers should be deployed to the border areas. More equipment should be given to them to be able to track. Now, I am sitting down here, I have an application, that is GPS, from this my phone, I can look at my farm in the village. And on live showing, I can be seeing how my animals are doing and people moving around. That also can be done. I know customs has a way of doing that. But smuggling through the ports, no officer or agent knows the content until when it is presented for examination. Well, some officers will say, because I am an examining officer ….. May be because of corruption, some of them would have been hinted. I get something there, I have something for you, what is the bargain. All those ones happen. But that one is not as common as the one you don’t see at all. Collusion is normal in all operations, whether government or whoever and because releasing officers have powers to say he is not convinced about what your declaration is, when you go to the oga, the oga asks you to go and reposition. Something, you have done before. It costs money to position a container. In some of the terminals, they are finding it difficult to position a container within a week. That is demurrage for the importer. So people are in hurry to carry their containers because they don’t want to pay demurrage. And that is why those things are able to pass, because people are impatient to carry load. Officers are also impatient to clear this one, because another one is there. And from there, you see people take advantage and these things pass. Even though customs went further that all your port operations as you are approaching the exist gate, you start another process of verification. And finally, anything can go on there. Nobody can tell a cat where the dry fish will be kept and the cat will not go there. And when you go to the gate, you find your way out of the gate, and when you are on the road, you still have officers. You will ask them, why are they having multiple checkpoints, they say multiple check is to counter wrong declaration, dugs. Go to Ikeja FOU, the place is flooded with either under-payment or what they discover. So, those steps slow down trade. But what is the alternative. The alternative is for Nigeria to be flooded, that even when you go to the market you will be buying drugs, so government needs to de-emphasize revenue target. When government has given the right to say which is wrong is right, and people concur because na we we, espirit de core, some of those things will be happening. And when a man says government asked me to meet a target of N1tn and in the process, he knows they can make N1.5tn, they make sure they make for the government N1tn. What stops them from making their own N.5tn and we say they are corrupt. So, we need to de-emphasize revenue generation, and go more for trade facilitation. That will help us a lot.
What has been the impact of including the 43 items in forex allocation?
It should not have happened. We should have de-emphasized the Nigerian taste for things that are foreign. One of the meetings we had with the late CGC Dikko, we let them know from our own point of view that what government should do is that all equipment used in manufacturing certain things that you go and buy abroad, let the equipment come zero duty. I can go and buy cassava and I need to import machinery that will make that cassava to get to another level before it becomes garri. If we are able to bring in such things, we will no longer be waiting for finished products from abroad. And it is customs we deal with from time to time. If you tell them, they will tell you to go upstairs, you go to National Assembly, they have their own way of life, whatever fanciful thing you put to them, the one that concerns them is what is: what do I benefit from it. Since that one could not work, what are those 43 items? These are items that can be produced in Nigeria. The same effort the CBN made for empowering agricultural farmers should have been put on those who want to get machinery, like Aba group, Nnewi group for example. They should be able to access Forex. And as at that time, we were clamouring for equipment to come into the country so that people can produce, rather than we go to buy them like bails of clothings, you can as well empower the people in Aba for them to produce and Nigeria will have what we needed. As soon as you block those 43 items because you don’t want to give them Forex, it was a mistake because people can source their forex by themselves abroad. Look at what they said that time, when you prepare your Form M it is valid for foreign exchange, which means you need CBN to give you forex. But if you say no, you are free. If you get your forex from abroad to bring in goods here, the pressure for forex available from CBN will be less. The value of Naira will stabilize. How many of these agricultural farmers collected these forex and made good use of it? What did they do with it? We are talking of massive industrial agriculture. That is where they diverted the attention. Even the present CBN governor confirmed that the approach we used for the 43 items which the importers associations have been saying …is it the punishment for us not to see jobs to do. But when you see people going to import with money they have over there, they will be very careful what quality of things they are bringing into Nigeria because it is their money that is involved. Unlike when CBN made it like a bazaar. And it was the big men that were getting the money from the CBN. That is why they say, go and import, if you import and we counter it with what is made in Nigeria, for example, and it will be cheaper for what is made in Nigeria, at the end what do you import, when you cannot sell or you sell and you are at a loss. What did we gain from the 43 items ban? Rather there was pressure on dollars for other things that do not warrant what we should bother about. We have been at the ports, we said when we ban 43 items importation will go down, cargo throughput was increasing, people are making more money. What is the impact of that 43 items ban?
But right now, are importers easily accessing official forex from CBN?
Because there is none in the CBN. The ports where everybody is dipping hand is empty. That is why our money came down, because dollar is scare to get. People use dollar from abroad through non-valid for foreign exchange no longer get it. People are keeping their private dollar up there. At the end of the day, the economy is bad and you see very short time Naira just went down down. It is our monetary policy that is wrong. If you listen to Cardoso now, you discover that it is like start all over to rebuild. Before Naira will appreciate for us to know whether the economy is doing well, it will take time. Because it was the damage that was done to this country. Look at what followed. There is scarcity of dollar, there was scarcity of Naira and then we said those in possession of dollar (hiding) allow them to put it in the banking system, they said banks should not accept dollars. That is why they asked people to return money so that we can get new notes. The quantity of new notes was very low people were struggling for it. Those who have dollars, who made money whether legally or illegally, who would have put it in the banking sector to help the economy to use were disallowed. And because the new notes were not available, people who had old notes that kept them for several years brought them out to be burning them. Some of the notes were already bad that even banks cannot collect them. So, monetary policy, we need to watch it. We need to look for what is good for this country.
Ends.
What is your reaction to the appointment of Wale Adeniyi as CG of Customs and his performance so far?
The new Comptroller General of Customs, fortunately for us, his appointment has justified the clamour of the maritime stakeholders requesting that all agencies of government should be headed by practitioners within the agencies. Several times, we have been disappointed when outsiders are brought in to head government agencies without the background and spend the whole half of their tenure learning on the job. But in this case, having been headed by retired soldiers, not once, but twice and headed by even a veterinary doctor, we wished and prayed that one day God will make it possible for the federal government to appoint a seasoned officer who has gone through the ranks. And it becomes a bit easier for us to justify that appointment when the immediate past CGC was a retired Army officer who took over from a seasoned officer of the customs thereby leaving a very big gap in the administration of customs irrespective of the efforts put forward to make it look as if the right thing had been done. So, he (Adeniyi) coming in, that his background has spoken for him. That is why you discover that since he got into office, a lot of activities germane to the Nigerian customs have been carried out and being carried out. Another kudos is that himself, being a public relations practitioner professionally, it had given him an opportunity to show himself to the public on why he is fit for the job. And he has not been disappointing. The reason being that he is reaching out to all stakeholders, he is accepting responsibility where officers are found wanting and he has been keeping officers on their toes. He has made die-hard officers and stakeholders who do not want change in the industry to embrace change for the better. He has been able to within a very short time marry the unmarriageable trade facilitation and revenue generation. Because we have known that if you want to go for trade facilitation, you cannot tie it to how much money generated by customs. They are opposite. But he has been preaching that we can achieve that without necessarily destroying one platform for the other. He has not got it fully right but I know it has been a sing-song for him along the way that it is possible and it is doable. That approach itself endeared him to all practitioners, especially from my own sector. It is not easy to really judge him now because of the short period he has stayed so far and the impact he has made. I am sure by the time he will be doing his first one year in office, a proper appraisal can be put in place. But so far, he has not been disappointing.
In what areas would you give him kudos since his appointment?
He has done well in the administration of customs, that is number one. Officers now approach their jobs professionally unlike when god-fatherism was at stake. And leaders of customs administration were unapproachable. And it became obey the last order. Now, a lot of training is being put in place which I will tell you honestly when officers are trained, they perform better. And it is not just one off thing, it is continuous. And one other thing he has done that no other CGC did is reaching back to retired officers, bring them together to get them to talk how they did it when they were in office. He needs them as a reservoir of knowledge. And reaching back at all is a very good step. So I know that we stakeholders, all of us, terminals, customs brokerage, they are looking on to him to solve their individual problems. It is very hard road to pass. But I know if he takes it one after the other, he will surely get there. So, it is really difficult to assess him fully now, but I foresee the future being well. He has agreed that he will be involved in training customs brokers and that is number one. When a customs officer is well trained and the customs agent is trained, there will not be any lacuna in the operations of the customs brokerage. For the first time, we have seen the CGC who is available, who reaches out to people. And public relations officers in all the commands are now up and doing. And irrespective of that, their revenue level is going higher which means you can do trade facilitation and still get to your target not by making obnoxious demand on the importer but rather educating all of us, the agents, importers on the need to do things right. I give him kudos on that level.
It has been noticed that despite all the huge seizures by the Customs, we still notice that some people are unrepentant, does this mean that the advice by associations of customs agents to their importers is not being taken seriously?
It is unfortunate that Nigeria is a road way now as a smuggling route. And the smuggling we are talking about is boldly performed. Because those days, you don’t smuggle through the ports, you go to the bush and smuggle, you are caught but now as it is experienced abroad, including America, they are battling smuggling because these cartels are so powerful and the power is not based on the fact that some of them are not identified. I give you example, if you go to the airport, in fact, when you hear the huge number of seizures going on in the port, you will be wondering, you mean some people will just take the bull by the horn to smuggle hard drugs, under-declaration and want to do whatever it is that is not allowed. The reason is that if you don’t get corruption out of people, it is not easy for a corrupt person to change, to say, I am no longer corrupt. Once they get into them, they fine-tune, no matter the obstacles you put on the way, they find a way to go about it. That is why this smuggling thing gets intense in the last one or two years. You see that Nigeria is now being seen as a road map being used by cartels as trading route to supply heroine to Asians and Arabian countries. You will always know that the final destination of all these drugs are not African countries. And it has to do with money. It is not only the customs themselves that are fighting smuggling, there is law that says any vessel that brings prohibited items should be impounded. How many vessels have you been able to impound ? Because when these goods are landed, they are kept in storage with the terminal operators. Terminal operators will not risk their businesses by allowing their terminals to be used for smuggling, but some how smuggled goods appear which means that the foreign end, the freight forwarders over there who know what they are loading, that is where this smuggling really occurs. It is when it is able to pass through here, for example , they said a warehouse full of drugs in Ikorodu, you know a lot of people heard that story, the one in Lekki too. Now, it passed through the ports, it is not impossible. You cannot block routes totally. Out of 100 containers, it is possible five or six may be carrying hard drugs. It must have passed, that is why it was able to get to Ikorodu. So, all of us must be involved . We tell our customs brokers, you must know your clients. Gone are days somebody will claim, eh, I was in a hotel, they called me, to come and take this Bill of Lading. No, no. That is not an excuse. And they are now being treated just like the smugglers themselves. But the more we get the judicial process involved not when they arrest a smuggler, they now arraign him and before you know it, they say, within the two, three days, they say due to due diligence the person comes back to the ports still doing the same business. So there must be a way to harness the efforts of the customs agents, the training of the customs brokers and judicial intervention. You remember when Hassan Bello was the Head of Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), he had this annual judicial meeting. And for a very long time, customs was not getting directly involved, other than to be invited to listen, looks for a low level officer who attends. No. There must be a way when that operation of getting judiciary involved should be with customs, NSC and along the line with NIMASA. NIMASA is for the safety of vessels coming to Nigeria. But if those vessels coming to Nigeria are seen to be aiding and abetting, bringing in prohibited items through the ports, then they are supposed to be involved. If you imagine the impact of these agencies coming together, then you will know that judges or magistrates who are involved in fining or getting those people indicted will now take it more serious than just giving sentences as if they are petty thieves. It is very very important. The Customs broker is a victim because the majority of the importers don’t get the customs brokers involved from the word go. And let me tell you, from the beginning all imports are supposed to be by Form M, in days gone by, it was the customs broker that prepared Form M on behalf of the importer. He is the one that does classification to make sure there is no under-declaration etc etc. But along the line, the same customs succumbed to the pressure from the banking industry that no, there is our client who knows about the funding, they start preparing Form M, And Form M is the first level of declaration for any cargo that is coming in. They now do the form m declaration, they get the invoices and approvals from agencies including those fake items that are being brought in because Standard Organisation of Nigeria (SON) must give certification before you now approach customs. The bank approaches Customs for the declaration and customs will now issue PAAR (Pre-Arrival Assessment Report). As at that time, the customs broker is not involved. It is when that PAAR is issued and the declaration the importer has made is written there that the customs broker will say, let me go and make declaration. They now go to the traders portal which is one step to the customs main portal. You now do declaration on behalf of the importer. From that time, you are culpable. Even, if you don’t know anything at all. Because in most cases, when they are doing examination of your declaration, that they find out this thing is containing this, this one is not well provided, and you now hold the customs broker first to go and look for the importer. So, if you don’t know your importer from the word go, from the beginning, how do you lay your hands on that importer? So these are part of the training we are asking the customs to involve customs brokers. As they train their officers to detect, train our people too. Now that customs agents are faced with the new act, with the amended CEMA, customs agents are now customs representatives. Am sure many people don’t even know that. Before agents are seen as the responsibility of the importer. But you are now customs representatives which means you must know your onions. You must be able to classify properly. Sometimes, some of us see PAAR , we know there is error in it. We don’t wait until we go to the field to go and do examination. We send importer to go and amend the PAAR because it is not supposed to be five percent , it is supposed to be 10 percent. If you don’t amend it now, when it gets to the field, they will now discover it and penalize you with 25 percent. No importer wants to hear that he is going to pay more that he has already declared. So, that training is what we need. You say why is our association no doing training, we do training, but how many people will be involved in training . But if customs has a training programme in place and there are courses you must attend or one of your educated staff must attend to enable you renew your licence, people will not run away from it. We are not even saying customs must pay for the training because in those days, we used to pay and invite customs to train us. We need to find a way out of that. Am sure our association is working hand in hand with the CGC to set that in place, including the customs themselves setting up institutes of customs brokerage. It is in Britain, India, South Korea. These are countries we have visited to look at how customs brokers operate. It is like their Siamese twins. Most of the conflicts we are having concerning our operations, you don’t find there. You will see customs representatives attending the same course. If you are talking about security imperatives in cargo clearance, and that is a training from customs for customs officers, why cannot agents also attend such courses as representatives and have the same knowledge as customs officers. It makes life easier for importers. Those are part of the things we are asking from the new CGC.
It is often said that smuggling cannot be booming without the involvement of some unscrupulous officers, what do you think the CGC or the management of the customs can do to check this?
There is something you need to take note of, smuggling through the border is different from smuggling through the ports. Smuggling through the border is when some people are physically carrying some prohibited items, drugs across the borders and we expect that officers will be manning the borders. Probably they are collecting something to close their eyes, let it pass. That is not easy to control. Most officers should be deployed to the border areas. More equipment should be given to them to be able to track. Now, I am sitting down here, I have an application, that is GPS, from this my phone, I can look at my farm in the village. And on live showing, I can be seeing how my animals are doing and people moving around. That also can be done. I know customs has a way of doing that. But smuggling through the ports, no officer or agent knows the content until when it is presented for examination. Well, some officers will say, because I am an examining officer ….. May be because of corruption, some of them would have been hinted. I get something there, I have something for you, what is the bargain. All those ones happen. But that one is not as common as the one you don’t see at all. Collusion is normal in all operations, whether government or whoever and because releasing officers have powers to say he is not convinced about what your declaration is, when you go to the oga, the oga asks you to go and reposition. Something, you have done before. It costs money to position a container. In some of the terminals, they are finding it difficult to position a container within a week. That is demurrage for the importer. So people are in hurry to carry their containers because they don’t want to pay demurrage. And that is why those things are able to pass, because people are impatient to carry load. Officers are also impatient to clear this one, because another one is there. And from there, you see people take advantage and these things pass. Even though customs went further that all your port operations as you are approaching the exist gate, you start another process of verification. And finally, anything can go on there. Nobody can tell a cat where the dry fish will be kept and the cat will not go there. And when you go to the gate, you find your way out of the gate, and when you are on the road, you still have officers. You will ask them, why are they having multiple checkpoints, they say multiple check is to counter wrong declaration, dugs. Go to Ikeja FOU, the place is flooded with either under-payment or what they discover. So, those steps slow down trade. But what is the alternative. The alternative is for Nigeria to be flooded, that even when you go to the market you will be buying drugs, so government needs to de-emphasize revenue target. When government has given the right to say which is wrong is right, and people concur because na we we, espirit de core, some of those things will be happening. And when a man says government asked me to meet a target of N1tn and in the process, he knows they can make N1.5tn, they make sure they make for the government N1tn. What stops them from making their own N.5tn and we say they are corrupt. So, we need to de-emphasize revenue generation, and go more for trade facilitation. That will help us a lot.
What has been the impact of including the 43 items in forex allocation?
It should not have happened. We should have de-emphasized the Nigerian taste for things that are foreign. One of the meetings we had with the late CGC Dikko, we let them know from our own point of view that what government should do is that all equipment used in manufacturing certain things that you go and buy abroad, let the equipment come zero duty. I can go and buy cassava and I need to import machinery that will make that cassava to get to another level before it becomes garri. If we are able to bring in such things, we will no longer be waiting for finished products from abroad. And it is customs we deal with from time to time. If you tell them, they will tell you to go upstairs, you go to National Assembly, they have their own way of life, whatever fanciful thing you put to them, the one that concerns them is what is: what do I benefit from it. Since that one could not work, what are those 43 items? These are items that can be produced in Nigeria. The same effort the CBN made for empowering agricultural farmers should have been put on those who want to get machinery, like Aba group, Nnewi group for example. They should be able to access Forex. And as at that time, we were clamouring for equipment to come into the country so that people can produce, rather than we go to buy them like bails of clothings, you can as well empower the people in Aba for them to produce and Nigeria will have what we needed. As soon as you block those 43 items because you don’t want to give them Forex, it was a mistake because people can source their forex by themselves abroad. Look at what they said that time, when you prepare your Form M it is valid for foreign exchange, which means you need CBN to give you forex. But if you say no, you are free. If you get your forex from abroad to bring in goods here, the pressure for forex available from CBN will be less. The value of Naira will stabilize. How many of these agricultural farmers collected these forex and made good use of it? What did they do with it? We are talking of massive industrial agriculture. That is where they diverted the attention. Even the present CBN governor confirmed that the approach we used for the 43 items which the importers associations have been saying …is it the punishment for us not to see jobs to do. But when you see people going to import with money they have over there, they will be very careful what quality of things they are bringing into Nigeria because it is their money that is involved. Unlike when CBN made it like a bazaar. And it was the big men that were getting the money from the CBN. That is why they say, go and import, if you import and we counter it with what is made in Nigeria, for example, and it will be cheaper for what is made in Nigeria, at the end what do you import, when you cannot sell or you sell and you are at a loss. What did we gain from the 43 items ban? Rather there was pressure on dollars for other things that do not warrant what we should bother about. We have been at the ports, we said when we ban 43 items importation will go down, cargo throughput was increasing, people are making more money. What is the impact of that 43 items ban?
But right now, are importers easily accessing official forex from CBN?
Because there is none in the CBN. The ports where everybody is dipping hand is empty. That is why our money came down, because dollar is scare to get. People use dollar from abroad through non-valid for foreign exchange no longer get it. People are keeping their private dollar up there. At the end of the day, the economy is bad and you see very short time Naira just went down down. It is our monetary policy that is wrong. If you listen to Cardoso now, you discover that it is like start all over to rebuild. Before Naira will appreciate for us to know whether the economy is doing well, it will take time. Because it was the damage that was done to this country. Look at what followed. There is scarcity of dollar, there was scarcity of Naira and then we said those in possession of dollar (hiding) allow them to put it in the banking system, they said banks should not accept dollars. That is why they asked people to return money so that we can get new notes. The quantity of new notes was very low people were struggling for it. Those who have dollars, who made money whether legally or illegally, who would have put it in the banking sector to help the economy to use were disallowed. And because the new notes were not available, people who had old notes that kept them for several years brought them out to be burning them. Some of the notes were already bad that even banks cannot collect them. So, monetary policy, we need to watch it. We need to look for what is good for this country.
Ends.
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