Dr. Boniface Aniebonam is the Founder of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) and Founder of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP). As the world celebrated the 2024 International Customs Day with an emphasis on engaging partners with purpose, Aniebonam sat with News Diet magazine to x-ray Customs engagements with stakeholders and the biggest challenges with cargo evacuation at Nigerian seaports.
The veteran freight forwarder also bares his mind on the Customs dilemma between trade facilitation and revenue generation. Read on!
2024 International Customs Day focused on Customs engaging its partners purposefully. As a port stakeholder and founder of NAGAFF, how crucial is the role of engaging partners and building mutual partnerships for the Nigeria Customs Service?
In modern-day administrations for public and private sectors, it is very important to build and maintain strategic partnerships. We can see right now that the current management in customs is maximizing partnerships. Of course, you know that the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, has been in the public domain as image maker of the Service collaborating with critical stakeholders. This is an added advantage for him as the Customs CG as he can do things on his own.
Before now, he may have had some good ideas as Customs spokesperson but could have barriers pursuing those ideas. As Customs CG, those barriers are gone and he can explore and build on partnerships.
The burden of revenue generation on Customs is huge, but it is strange to see the Budget Office of the Federation project 3 trillion from NCS in 2024 while Customs is targeting N5.08 trillion. Does this suggest that trade facilitation will be jettisoned amid Customs zeal to meet revenue targets?
I’m sure the Customs CG is aware that trade facilitation is key to the subject matter and central to Customs operations. When we use the word trade facilitation, to me the concept seems to be something that people do not understand. The real construct should be the facilitation of trade and it is about compliance. Revenue comes on its own because you cannot collect revenue from nothing. There must be cargoes for one to talk about revenue therein.
Nonetheless, the way Customs goes about revenue isn’t the best because they put a lot of pressure on themselves. Target is a just word, budget is another word. Even the federal government of Nigeria comes out with a budget of what they intend to do for the year. The expectation in terms of expenditure and sources of that fund. They have that target, but it’s not something that is sacrosanct such that revenue has to downplay trade facilitation.
Where there is trade facilitation, what happens is that the revenue will follow.
Moreover, some actions of Customs officers negate trade facilitation. For instance, I don’t understand why most Customs officers insist that an alert from Customs headquarters must follow with a debit note. It doesn’t make sense to me. I had the privilege to send a short message to the Customs CG to explain to me. I’m surprised he never answered that question. It shouldn’t be compulsory that when there is an alert from Tariff &Trade at Customs headquarters the operational officers must issue DN.
When the cargo is compliant in all material respect, I don’t understand why the freight forwarder or importer has to pay anything. However, I have also seen when such alert is put in place a seasoned Customs officers does the right thing by removing the wrong alert.
In recent times, I have seen some Comptrollers talking about an unapproved benchmark for 40ft or 20ft containers but these things are said informally. There are no documents to back these claims.
For instance, those who import used items and Customs instruct them to pay a given value. As far as I’m concerned, going by Customs principles, used items do not have any value but for duty calculations whatever value the person who brought it in attached to it should be used. Since such items are not contraband, Customs should just ensure that the appropriated trade rate is imputed. These things need to be addressed and I believe the CG of Customs has the capacity to look at all of these issues.
The Customs CG was recently at Tin Can Island Port, showcasing some seizures of cocaine and colorado worth over N4.2billion. Does this portend more rigorous examinations by Customs and what message does this send to NAGAFF and the entire freight forwarding community?
Smuggling is a business and the government is aware that people will smuggle; that is the reason it directed and deployed her agents either as a Customs, Nigerian Police, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA), National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC), among others to protect the interest of the government.
While these things continue to happen, the new order of artificial intelligence also comes into play and the NCS is a member of an intellectual community – World Customs Organizations (WCO). So what you are referring to in Tin Can must have been a result of intelligence received by the customs from other agencies or the international community.
Now, talking about the inherent problem that may follow these kinds of discoveries. The customs authority is very clear on issues of joining declaration for customs purpose, issues of 100% customs examination, with emphasis on the state of the nation in terms of security. When freight agents and importers refused to make honest declarations for custom purpose, it negated the first idea of making Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) sacrosanct. PAAR was reversed and later made an advisory document because people were not honest in their declaration.
In Nigeria, the scanning equipment that we have, those that are working, are hydro scanners for image analysis. To what extent can we say that these type of scanners that we have can bring out certain substances that Customs may be looking for? If you have a homogeneous item in a 20ft container, maybe as you are moving the container, the cartons may shift and when you scan there may be a hole, the image will show a hole and that will lead to a physical examination. That’s for homogenous items.
For non-homogenous items, the image analysis will be confusing, so that consignment must go for physical examination so that they know what exactly is in the container.
What we see in the field negates the use of scanners in our operations. That’s why a lot of freight forwarders don’t want to go to the scanning unit because it comes to double handling. If the scanner will result to physical examination, why don’t I go straight to the physical examinations? These are issues and when we talk about trade facilitation, these are the things we are talking about.
I think Nigeria Customs operations does not really contribute to more than 30% of problems at the ports. There are bigger problems up to 70% posed by the terminal operators.
To what extent are the seaport terminals prepared to ensure efficiency in terms of logistics that are required for container operations. Then for Customs themselves who authorized the outer terminals, how many of them have the equipment, even the conventional port as it were, like the APMT Apapa – if you go for examination today, they will give you one week and for that one week, you must be paying storage charges. A lot of things are very wrong in the port but one only gets to meet Customs at the point of examination.
Most Customs processes are online, so if your declaration online is genuine, once you do the examination and Customs releases it. With Customs you can move cargo out of the port within 24hours, but how many terminals are ready for such operations?
Those who do not make an honest declaration for Customs purposes know what they are doing and if there are delays, it’s their business because the NCS will not compromise revenue due to the government, even on the matters of checking smuggling activities. What happened in Tin Can is a used container blocked with very big machine. If you go into the details of what transpired, you will see that the very thing that the Customs CG came to check will put an officer in problem, because a proper examination was not done. What would you want the officer to do if the terminal operators couldn’t open up the items and examination fees have been paid.
The Customs officer may have decided to facilitate trade by using his discretion but look at the problem he must have found himself now. Sometimes, when you want an officer to exercise discretion but good luck to him because his discretion may lead him into problems.
Recently, we have seen nighttime operations and weekend operations at Tin Can Island Port and port users are hopeful this will happen in other ports. Moreover, there are challenges with nighttime operations; security, lighting among others. What’s your view on this?
We know the problems of night operations in the nation. We can do documentation, but carrying containers on the roads at night isn’t safe. I think we are inviting trouble because we can’t be shying away from saying the truth. The truth is that you are not safe on the road in the night with your container, they will hijack your container. Most of those trucks have fake numbers.
There are a lot of issues and as the founder of NAGAFF there are no number of issues and complaints on how containers are hijacked on the roads by force amid the general security situation in the country.
How would you rate Adewale Adeniyi’s administration as Customs CG so far?
Customs is a technical organization and it is always better to have someone who is in the Service heading it. The new Customs Act has clarified this issue by stating that the Customs helmsman must be a career officer.
CG Wale is most appropriate. He is competent and he knows what he is supposed to do. That’s why we can see the efforts he is making in carrying out responsibilities. One thing that excited me about him was the idea of bringing in the retired Comptroller Generals, Deputy Comptroller-Generals (DCGs) and Assistant Comptroller-Generals (ACGs) to give them a sense of belonging and learn from their wealth of experience. This is something that has been existing in the Nigerian Army, Police and all that. When they retire they come back, their colleagues still find a way of making use of them in more critical issues. The current Customs CG is bringing a lot of innovations and also prioritizing stakeholders engagements.
What the Customs CG needs now is the support of everybody. NAGAFF is there to provide this support and we will continue to do it. I also want to thank the CG of Customs for merit award for NAGAFF presented at the International Customs Day. Customs is my domain and I’m always joyful when people speak good of them and I’m happy the CG is making good strides.
