From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Acting Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, does not have time for prolonged entreaties as he takes over from Hameed Ali, who sailed the service into different tempestuous waters.
The new CGC has a litany of issues needing his immediate attention and, interestingly, he is a crisis management expert with over 30 years’ experience and robust grasp of Customs regulations, international trade rules, laws and procedures.
According to stakeholders, one of the first tasks for the CGC is to swiftly reverse the contentious $3.2 billion Customs Modernisation Project shackled by legal crises.
They said Ali, a long retired army colonel with near-zero knowledge of customs operations, bypassed an existing court case to promote the disputed project.
Already, a group of concerned customs officers have written to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to immediately halt the rancorous deal casually addressed as e-Customs.
In the letter, the officers informed Tinubu that the project amounts to a concession of customs modernisation for 20 years and will result in some persons with vested interest taking away government revenue under the Comprehensive Import Supervision Scheme (CISS) account.
The group wondered why a project that was bogged down with litigation and opacity could be defiantly promoted by the erstwhile CGC.
They described it as a huge conduit to squander government’s revenue.
Faulting the award of the modernisation concession, the group alleged that the company handling it was hurriedly registered, without the required technical experience, and could set the gains achieved by the service backwards.
According to them, the NCS is presently one of the most automated government agencies in the country with a homegrown Nigeria Integrated Customs Information System (NICIS) that only requires upgrades to meet the demands of current realities.
They added that NCS is the most modernised customs administration in West and Central Africa handling the highest volume of trade by relying on a blend of technology and human expertise, while querying an intended loan facility for modernisation that will impoverish the country already burdened by huge sovereign debt.
They claimed that using the existing modernisation template of the service, the NCS has been able to move from generating N800 billion in 2015 to collecting N2 trillion in 2022 without the controversial concession
The group said over 3,500 officers of the NCS have been trained while 150 of them are now undergoing technical training on various aspects of modernisation required for trade.
Bionica Technologies had dragged the Federal Government and the NCS before a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja.
Also sued by Bionica are the Attorney-General of the Federation and Minister of Justice; Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning; the Infrastructure Concession & Regulatory Commission (ICRC); Trade Modernisation Project Ltd (TMPL); Huawei Technologies (Nigeria); Bergmans Security Consultants and Africa Finance Corporation (AFC).
Bionica accused the defendants of illegally replacing it as the lead promoter of the Customs modernisation project earlier approved by former President Muhammadu Buhari.
In a memo dated September 17, 2019 signed by Chief of Staff to the former President, Abba Kyari, the Ministers of Finance and Justice were informed that President Buhari had approved the engagement of Bionica Technologies West Africa (lead sponsor), Bergmans Security Consultant & Supplies Ltd (co-sponsor), Africa Finance Corporation (lead financier) and Huawei (lead technical service provider) to establish a special purpose vehicle to enter a 20-year concession arrangement with the Nigeria Customs Service and the ICRC for the Customs modernisation project with the aim of establishing a paperless Customs administration, the so-called e-Customs.
After President Buhari’s approval, the relationship between Bionica and Bergmans went sour. The dispute between the two companies reportedly arose over the shareholding structure of the original SPV named E-Customs HC Project Limited).
On May 17, 2022, the Nigeria Customs Service announced the signing of the e-Customs public-private partnership contract with Trade Modernisation Project Limited (TMPL). In the announcement, Bergmans was reportedly recognised as the sponsor of the e-Customs project instead of Bionica.
The announcement was sequel to the incorporation of TMPL as the new SPV for the Customs modernisation project rather than the E-Customs (HC) Project Limited registered by Bionica approved by the Federal Government for the project.
Bionica was not included in TPML, which was registered on April 7, 2022 – less than eight weeks before it replaced E-Custom (HC) Project Limited as the SPV for the e-Customs project. The officials of Bionica allege that TMPL’s lead sponsor, Bergmans did not participate in the project development and bidding phase but was somehow brought into the project in 2018 by Customs Comptroller-General, Hameed Ali.
“Our service is a regimented institution with sensitive roles to play in national security and economy and should not be distracted by an endless fight between companies struggling to benefit from modernising us. This is a big distraction and an impending setback, only the president can stop” they said in the petition.
Also commenting on the controversial project, a seasoned maritime expert, Lucky Amiwero, said it should be reorganized and investigated because the people who promoted it were not Custom experts.
“It is something that the government must review, get experts to look at it and it should not be implemented now. The people who supervised that project are not experts. So the government should be very careful, it has to be harmonised.”
Amiwero, who is also the founder of the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents, said there was a need for a total reorganisation and reform of Customs.
Also speaking, the Acting National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents, Mr Kayode Farinto, said, “The project is just to defraud the Federal Government. Firstly, how can you bring in Chinese to come and supervise our Customs when we have indigenous software companies that can handle that? Secondly, everything was shrouded in secrecy and Nigerians do not even know the Memorandum of Understanding signed for the contract. So we have made recommendations to the new president that the project should be cancelled, it is a fraud, it is a way of settling the boys, it was done at the twilight of Buhari’s administration and we have advised Mr President that it should be cancelled,” he added.
Manpower development
Adeniyi is expected to drive an aggressive manpower development agenda for officers and men as the Service fully embraces a paperless operation that reduces human contact from the stage of entry lodgement and declaration through cargo examination and final exit.
This will achieve seamless trade facilitation, increase port efficiency, raise revenue and reduce incidents of corruption.
Proper seizure management
The e-auction initiative of Hameed Ali has been described by stakeholders as a monumental failure because many Nigerians did not understand the cumbersome bidding procedure and general operational template.
Many alleged that the entire initiative was far from transparent as it has been a platform used by the Customs management to share seized items among their cronies.
It was gathered that the auction, which is supposed to be a regular exercise, was last carried out years ago with many Nigerians completely oblivious of it.
At the unveiling in 2017, the former CGC said the e-auction initiative was part of efforts by the Service to eliminate the sharp practices that had characterised the manual auction system, grow its revenue generation capacity, as well as provide equal opportunities to all Nigerians in the seamless disposal of seized/condemned and overtime/abandoned cargoes.
Officers of the service are excluded from participating in the electronic auction, while owners of the seized item are excluded from bidding for them.
There is also the issue of overlapping functions among the enforcement wing of the Service.
There is the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Strike force and task force. There is also Customs police and border drill, all doing practically the same thing.
The new CGC is expected to deploy Comptrollers to head areas and special units, not making them redundant for Deputy Controllers to lead such functions.
The port community insists that trade facilitation should tower above the desperation for revenue in readiness for the full implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AfCFTA).
Engagement with OPS
The CGC is expected to deepen regular meetings with the import community, the organised private sector (OPS) and the entire commerce ecosystem to collaboratively tackle the lingering issue of cross-border smuggling and national security.
Experts say it is time to close the gulf between Customs and the business community in the last eight years. This led to dissenting views about some fiscal policy issues like Vehicle Identification Number valuation for imported used automobiles and other matters.