The President, Association of Registered Freight Forwarders of Nigeria (AREFFN), Dr. Frank Ukor has attributed the shortfall recorded in the revenue collected by most customs commands in first quarter of 2016 to the auction of about 2, 115 containers by the former Comptroller General of Customs, Alhaji Dikko Inde Abdullahi.
It will be recalled that the Customs Area Controller (CAC) Apapa Area Command, Comptroller Willy Egbudin at a stakeholders’ meeting held last month at the command disclosed that the command recorded a shortfall of N13 billion in the revenue collected by the command in the first quarter of 2016 compared to what it collected in the corresponding period in 2015.
Reacting to the development, Dr. Ukor noted that he warned the former Comptroller-General of Customs about this development in a letter he wrote to him when he announced the intention of the service to auction those containers which was then tagged overtime cargoes.
He observed that what gave rise to the overtime cargoes at that time was the wrong application of the Destination Inspection regime where customs was not supposed to seize any good but required customs to raise Demand Notice (DN) to get the importer to pay for any discrepancy noticed in the cause of examination as against what was declared by the importer.
According to him,” When people ask me question like this, you know what I say? I warned them when Dikko decided to sell 2, 115 containers that belonged to importers, people that are bringing goods and paying revenue. What do you expect? It was exactly what I wrote to him that made him came after me.
“I was one of those that attended the public hearing, CRFFN invited us and I went and when I got there I said, gentlemen, don’t think of selling these containers because when you sell them, you will see the revenue government will generate I the subsequent year will be less. They said nobody should listen to me because already they had made up their minds on what they will do; they were just conducting the public hearing so that it will be on paper that they did it.
“When we came out of the hall, Tahir Musa came out and said ah! You have not changed, see you, you have not changed and I said why will I change? I didn’t change when I was younger, is it now that I am much older that I will change? I am telling you the truth, the truth is if you sell these containers, your revenue will drop. Is not what is happening?
“These are overtime cargoes. What gives rise to overtime cargoes? Was not it not as a result of the wrong application of the Destination Inspection regime? Because according to the regime, you are not supposed to seize any good. Any good that comes with discrepancy, what you do is to raise a DN to meet up that discrepancy but Dikko flouted it, gave orders,’ if you see anything’, of course he had been there, he knows that those ones are small importers who imports one or two containers, go to the alternative market to buy FOREX, they are the people that go regularly to buy and then when he seized two 40 ft container because they opened it and saw television, probably television that was given to somebody as a gift, they will say they have seen something not declared with the customs, instead of raising a DN, they will seize the container.
“Out of fear because a lot of them will definitely have such discrepancies, they abandoned the containers hoping that government will eventually do what it has been doing and say okay come in and clear your consignment but we are going to give you a penalty which you will pay and carry your goods. They were expecting and they waited. Instead of government coming up with that, Dikko got somebody at the National Assembly to say there was congestion at the ports. Of course you know there was no congestion because most of the terminals were empty. And then they started flying the kite that the ports were congested and they should go and dispose off overtime cargoes and before you know it, 2, 115 containers were disposed off”.
He however disclosed that those containers were not sold to those that borrowed money from the banks to make those imports rather they were sold to people who had no relevance to the ports who in turn sold the goods and pocketed the proceeds using them to marry new wives, buy new cars for their girlfriends even as he accused customs management of shortchanging the government while selling those containers.
“And as if that was not enough, government came up with this FOREX restriction. So, became more difficult for the people to bring in goods and if goods did not come in, will you see revenue? So, that is the issue, that is why it is difficult for government to get the revenue, that was why customs could not meet up and it is going to be like this for a very long time because 2, 115 containers, if you compute the amount of those goods, you will see that it is a whooping amount”, he said.
He therefore expressed doubt over the ability of the Service to collect about N1trillion revenue target it set for itself saying it will be difficult to achieve giving the present circumstances adding that the officers cannot do magic to collect such amount where there are no import into the country.
Meanwhile, as at the time of filing this report, the National Public Relations Officer (PRO), Mr. Wale Adeniyi could not be reached as all the calls put across him did not go through.
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