…Blames influx arms, narcotics, others on issuance of Customs license to foreigners
…Advocates for establishment of Maritime Tribunal, Laboratories
The Managing Director of Mickey Excellency Nigeria Limited, Otunba Abdulazeez Babatunde Mukaila has called on the federal government to actually define the kind of Customs administration it wants for Nigeria.
Mukaila who was reacting to a statement allegedly credited to the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi to the effect that the tax reform bill, if implemented the way it was crafted, may run the Service out of existence, said it was time for Nigeria to decide if it wanted a preventive customs Service or a customs that was saddled with tax collection.
He argued that customs job globally had gone beyond tax collection adding that customs all over the world were now saddled with the responsibility of stopping espionage, spying, terrorism, money laundering, intellectual property theft among others.
He said, “The Nigeria Customs needs to advance beyond tax collection. When you give a foreigner license to operate as a freight forwarder in Nigeria, and you licensed them to operate as a customs broker, and you want to stop terrorism, and you don’t want tramadol in Nigeria, you don’t want proliferation of arms and ammunition, and the people that have the capacity to build the arms are licensed to clear it, you will just be on the television showing how many arms that you have caught, you won’t be able to tell us how many that have escaped.
“This is because you have allowed a breach of your security architecture by giving foreigners access to the port and access to customs data to do presentations, to do declaration and follow suit to the port.
“So, these are all the things that I think that beside dancing round that we made more money, we need to look inwards and think about security. I believe if you are conversant with the NDLEA news, there’s no one week, if not daily, that they don’t make numerous arrests. They are arresting at the airport, they are arresting at the seaports, they are arresting on the roads, in the interior, all these psychotropic substances are not manufactured here in Nigeria.
“Three days ago, European Commission released a study where it said that the Nigerian Ports are the gateway to substandard products in the whole of West Africa and the EU will not publish what they did not know. Nigerian Ports have been identified as culprit to substandard products that permeate the whole of West Africa. That goes to show that we are lacking in standard regulation. That is the verdict.
“This is where the government needs to beam its searchlight. Our soldiers are in the bush fighting and there are guns flying, Boko Haram has access to every kind of weapon. This has not been a very good time in the last two years and the government needs to look at that.”
Mukaila who is the immediate past Sole Administrator of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, ANLCA, however, commended the federal government for some of the moves it has undertaken including efforts to confer the Port Regulatory status on the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, NSC.
“I believe when that scales through, we would have separated the judge from the jury because right now, we still have a situation where the government agencies are the judge and they are the jury at the same time. It’s NAFDAC that determines if you are guilty or not, there’s nobody that you can report NAFDAC to. It’s SON that can detain your cargo, you have nowhere to go to. It’s either you comply or you suffer economic loss.
“So, I want to see a situation where our government can look into our clamour for a Maritime Tribunal. All over the world, even customs Services, there are tribunals where learned Judges, some versatile customs officers, technocrats, chemists, physicists, people that have knowledge about products are seated when there is an argument”, he submitted.
Acknowledging that the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS was doing wonderfully well, he said, “I want to see the Nigeria Customs Service establish a laboratory where we can argue just as if you are at the Airports, your bag is quarantined and tested on the spot to see if you have used it to smuggle drugs before. Customs all over the world have laboratories. Enough of somebody who is not a chemist in the customs service querying chemicals.
“They (customs) have the money, customs has budgets, they have subvention. Recently, they are clamouring for four percent of duty payable, they should work towards establishing a laboratory. I was in Uganda, they have it, that small country, so that if there’s a specification argument, you take it to the lab.
“Even NAFDAC doesn’t have a laboratory to test products. Before now, customs used to refer products to NAFDAC for testing but I doubt if NAFDAC has upgraded what they have. They rely more on consultants. These days, if you have an argument about tyre, customs will take it to the Dunlop laboratory for testing so that they determine the quality. Where is the Standards Organization of Nigeria’s laboratory?”
Insisting that the government needed to work hard to put these structures in place, he added, “I think this government is listening, this is very important, this needs to be done. The soft and physical structures need to be improved upon. It has been so dilapidated over the years that we are just tagging along by rule of the thumbs, it’s you against us. Maritime services have gone beyond that level.
“Under customs as the lead agent, I give it to the Comptroller General of Customs, he has come online and has put himself out for criticisms and you can see and read, it’s in the mind, the heart and the head of every Nigerian what he is doing. His ability to react to emerging stories is unprecedented. I want to believe it is because of his background as an image maker.
“Customs is in the consciousness of every Nigerian now. They read and they know what they are doing. So, in all,I still want to be hopeful too that things will get better.”
Photo: Otunba Abdulazeez Babatunde Mukaila, Managing Director, Mickey Excellency Nigeria Limited.
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