When about nine months ago, exactly on the 1st of December, 2013 when the Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs Service, Alhaji Dr. Inde Dikko Abdullahi stormed Lagos with his Management team to preach the problem free message of the Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) to the Stakeholders at different locations in Lagos, little did anyone envisaged that nine months down the line, the service will be singing a different song.
Before December 1, 2013, the Risk Assessment Report (RAR) being issued by the Destination Inspection Agents was the document used for clearing cargoes at the nation’s seaports and because the document was not being issued by the Nigeria Customs Service, it was said to be an advisory document for the Service hence the clamour by the Nigeria Customs supported by the teeming number of the stakeholders to take over the exercise.
It will also be recalled that the contract of the former Destination Inspection Agents which was due to be terminated by December, 2012 was extended by six months and later another six months, an action that attracted the ire of both the Service and the critical stakeholders alluding pecuniary interest in the way the government was handling the contract.
Nonetheless, while some stakeholders were of the opinion that the Customs should be allowed to run the Destination Inspection Scheme so as to eliminate the incessant query and alerts being generated by the customs as a result of inconsistence in what was declared by the importer and what the Destination Inspection Agents generated in the document, some were of the view that the Service was not adequately equipped to take over the scheme as they lacked the technical know-how to manage the scheme effectively.
As the argument continued, the Service itself came out with its own argument that its officers and men were adequately trained and prepared to take over the scheme calling on the government not to hesitate to hand over the scheme to them as the Service was better positioned to do its own thing than have another person do it for the Service.
Finally, the government yielded to their demand and finally terminated the contract of the Destination Inspection Agents on the 30th November, 2013 paving way for the Service to fully take charge.
At a town hall meeting with the importers and agents at the Trade Fair Complex, Lagos-Badagry Expressway, Lagos on December, 1, that same year, the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Dikko Inde Abdullahi said that with the take over of the Destination Inspection Scheme by the service, better days await the importers and agents in the course of transacting business in the ports.
While introducing the PAAR document which incidentally was launched that day, he stated that with PAAR, Clearing in the country would be less cumbersome and time bound adding that with PAAR, no more would incessant alerts be the order of the day because before the arrival of the goods into the country, all the necessary information regarding the cargo would have been captured and verified for onwards release to the owner.
Dikko also assured that PAAR which replaced the RAR would not be an advisory document as was the case with the RAR since it was to be issued by the Service itself and that PAAR would become a final document so that when it was issued, no customs officer would query it.
He also promised that with the introduction of PAAR, no more would the officers and men of the Service mount road blocks as the practice had become outdated as according to him,” Customs will not release and customs intercepts”.
However, nine months down the line, the whole promises seems to be eluding the stakeholders who believed that PAAR had come to wipe away their tears as most of the things they were promised PAAR would take care of are not only visible but appeared to have worsened with PAAR in place that most people were calling for the return of the erstwhile Service Providers.
First, it was delays in the generation and transmission of the PAAR document became an issue, a development the Service described as a teething problem that would soon be surmounted by the Service.
Secondly, the Federal Operations Units (FOU) still mounts road blocks today and intercepts goods duly released from the Seaports on the ground of having classified information that the said good was not properly exited from the port.
Not only does the Service query PAAR these days as against the promises of the Comptroller General that PAAR would not be queried but also, there was no proper profiling of imports as most of the issues of valuation and classification becomes an issue for contention between the men of the Service and the stakeholders.
Worried by these developments, stakeholders began to cry out in order to drawn the attention of the Service to their plight especially the incessant alerts and querying of PAAR issued by the Customs ruling centre in Abuja, a situation which attracted shocking revelation and answers from the Service.
First, it was the Customs Area Controller, Comptroller Charles Epowei Edike who provided an answer that got the stakeholders viewing the Service with caution.
In a television programme monitored by Primetime Reporters in August, 2014, Comptroller Edike stated that PAAR was not yet a final cargo clearance instrument because the infrastructure or what could be called the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) infrastructure was outside the control of the Nigeria Customs Service.
Edike further alluded that PAAR could not yet be a final document owning to the integrity of the importer who said he had a particular item on the document only for the cargo to read something else after physical examination.
He said that to resolve these and make PAAR a final document, there was the need to include an unassailable photograph of the imported item such that the classification of such import become sacrosanct adding that the step was required by the customs authorities for PAAR to attain a status of a final document for imports into the country.
As the stakeholders were battling to grapple with the intricacies of Edike’s statement, the big bang came from the National Public Relations Officer of the Service, Mr. Wale Adeniyi who was quoted as saying that PAAR is not Final document for clearance of goods at the ports.
He gave the reasons for PAAR not being a final document to include the dishonest attitude of importers who under-declare their imports in a bid to short change the government and the lack of technical know-how on the part of some officers who muddle up figures and information.
He maintained that just as importers have the right to appeal when they feel an item had been overvalued, the same way do the officers have the right to query PAAR when they feel that the importer under-declared.
The Public Relations Officer of the Service at the Tincan Island Command, Mr. Chris osunkwo also collaborated the views of Mr. Adeniyi when he said that PAAR was an advisory document because importers and their agents have failed to embrace honest declaration saying that the PAAR ruling centre in Abuja worked on fact presented by the importer on his document even as he said that not all fact presented by the importer was correct.
To crown it all, the Comptroller General of Customs, Alhaji Dikko during his last visit to Lagos early this month disclosed that PAAR could be queried as against his earlier disposition that the document cannot be queried adding that the officers issuing documents at Customs Headquarters only work with the documents submitted by an importer or his agents.
He further argued that the service was not querying PAAR but the importers integrity and level of compliance saying that, “when we notice that what you give us is false, we have to amend it”.
The questions now are, did the Service not envisage this non compliant attitude of Nigerian importers before coming to claim that the PAAR was going to be a final document? Is the Service saying that all the Nigerian importers are dishonest people? Didn’t the Service conduct the due diligence of the document before launching out or could it be that they were in a hurry to take over the Scheme from the service providers that they failed to take into consideration, some of the challenges now facing the document thus tending towards making it a failed project? When did the Service realized that its men and officers lacked the technical know-how to handle PAAR?
These are questions that the Service needed to provide answers to.
Meanwhile, speaking to Primetime Reporters on the matter, the National President, Nigerian Institute of Freight Forwarders and Customs Brokers (NIFFCB), Dr. Zebulon Ikokide averred that it was understandable that RAR was an advisory document because Customs were not the ones issuing the document but for Customs to say that PAAR which was its own document generated by its officers left much to be desired.
Dr. Ikokide maintained that if the Customs should insist that PAAR is an advisory document, then it meant that some other persons and not the Service were generating PAAR for them thereby advising the Service to go back to the drawing board if they don’t know what they were doing.
According to him,” for the fact that when they were having the other document from the Inspection agents, when they were having RAR, it was an advisory document; we can understand that because they sent those documents to customs as an advisory document”.
“Since they are the ones doing it themselves, I don’t see any justification for them to say that PAAR is still going to be an advisory document. For me, I feel that it is a way of trying to make illegal money. That is what I feel if they said it is an advisory document. Under no circumstances shall that document be an advisory document”.
He however said that that until customs come to partner and assist the NIFFCB to train the Freight Forwarders on the tenets of the international trade and how to make honest and genuine declaration, they would continue to have the issue of dishonest declaration amongst the rank and files of the freight forwarders.
“Ordinarily, as a businessman, without training, without the knowledge of what should be done, they want to make profit in many other ways. So, if they are still having people who are making wrong declaration and they are not correctly declaring what they are importing, then that means that people are still crude in the international business”.
“Until they assist the institute like the Institute of Freight Forwarding and Customs Brokers, they will continue having wrong declaration and incorrect declarations”, he said.
On his part, the Former Public Relations Officer of Save Nigeria Freight Forwarders Importers and Exporters Coalition (SNIFFIEC), Mr. David Pius stated that the statement contradicted what they were told at the inception of PAAR at the town hall meeting last year by the Comptroller General of Customs himself describing it as the height of deception.
He said,” remember they told us that PAAR will take care of incessant alerts coming from Abuja and different commands as it will become a thing of the past. I don’t see any nation who works with deception in terms of their Customs Service and that Nation still progresses, it cannot happen. Sincerity of purpose should be a core that the Service should embrace”.
He therefore advised the service to retrace its step because they path it was threading on currently would not benefit anybody, saying that although they may be making money for themselves and for the government, they may not get to their destination like this.
That said, will it be out of place if one should say that PAAR may be on the fast lane to failure? Only time will tell.
