The Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has faulted the practice of giving the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) annual revenue target describing it as unprecedented in the history of customs administration all over the world.
The National President of ANLCA, Chief Iju Tony Nwabunike who made this observation in a media chat at the national secretariat of the association in Lagos last week noted that giving customs target would make the officers to become unnecessary overzealous while describing it as a total departure from what customs was set up to do which according to him include; facilitation of trade, security of goods and services as well as the border posts.
He said, “If you give customs a target, are you encouraging importation that you are saying that you want manufactured locally? Can you marry the two? The target you are giving them is on duty paid from the goods that is coming into the country. So, you are increasing tariffs, removing some items and putting them on the prohibition list of the Central Bank of Nigeria, for example, the 42 items; that means, technically, you are discouraging the import procedure of the country.
“Now, you are increasing the target value without sitting down to do the comparative analysis and how to get the whole thing measured up. While the target is coming up, importation is highly discouraged, so, you are putting the customs under undue pressure. For me and my association, we believe that they have to review the idea of giving target and allow customs to work on their normal level.
“Nigerian customs these days are professionals, they are coming up to standard, to the international best practices. They can compete with their counterparts all over the world but the situation is simple, why must you be giving them target, making the people to see customs as not too friendly? For us, our position as ANLCA, we believe that giving customs a target is not solving the problem; it is part of the problems we are going to mention further to the federal government of Nigeria.”
Also speaking on the matter, the Managing Director of Goldlink Investment Limited, Sir Tony Oge Anakebe while agreeing with ANLCA that in all parts of the world, target was not set for customs, however posited as far as Nigeria customs was concerned, for more than thirty years now that had been the norm.
Going down the memory lane, Sir Anakebe recalled that in past, some Comptroller General of Customs in Nigeria had met and actually surpassed the annual revenue targets set for them while others could even as he further submitted that it had been a source of motivation for customs officers to wake up as according to him, “as far as this target is given to them, they are anxiously working to meet it up.”
“So, if the federal government gives them a target, it is a call to duty”, he added.
On why the present Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.) jerked up the revenue target for 2020 set for him from N1.5 trillion to N2 trillion, Anakebe who is also a chieftain of ANLCA had this to say, “I believe that the CG is saying that based on his believe that border closure will last for years but I don’t know if that will be possible because the money he raked in for the federal government within this short period of border closure might have given him the impetus to say, let us go up the more.
“But what is there is how long will the closure of border last? And if those borders are opened, are his men strong enough to abide by the dictates of the ECOWAS protocols? I believe he sincerely wants to reach that target because the goods that usually go to other countries now come to Nigeria.
“By God’s grace, we should be expecting more cargoes because industries are coming up and importation of industrial law materials are increasing. So, where we are expecting those monies to come from is from those industrial law materials. So, there will be increase in the volume of TEUs.”
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