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By Steve Agbota [email protected]
In response to criticism from some quarters, Comptroller General of Customs Adewale Adeniyi has clarified the rationale behind the Service’s decision to pursue a verification exercise for private jet owners in the country.
Adeniyi disclosed that numerous private jets are operating in Nigeria without being subjected to the law. The Service’s data revealed that only a small fraction of private jet owners have paid the requisite Customs duties to legally operate their aircraft within Nigeria.
Excerpts:
FX volatility
What we experienced in the first quarter of 2024 was a very critical situation for Nigerians and Nigerian businesses because of the volatility that we had in the exchange rates.
For instance, we had as much as 45 per cent decrease in the volume of cars that were brought into Nigeria at that period, though they were not the kind of cars that fetched optimum revenue for the Customs. However, regular imports were affected because people could no longer import raw materials as much as they wanted and the volatility did not allow them to plan for tomorrow. The rate could be X today and tomorrow it would become X plus 25 and things like that. So it makes life extremely difficult. But we had some relative degree of stability in the second quarter because there are lots of discussions going on, some at the level of the National Assembly, most of whuch are spearheaded by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, bringing on stakeholders that are involved together to ensure that we achieve stability.
Fuel smuggling
When you get open source intelligence, you discover that the prices of fuel in neighbouring countries create a lot of incentives for smuggling. In Benin Republic, a litre of fuel is between N1500 and N1600, in Cameroun it is high as N2000 per litre. So when we have this situation in neighbouring and we are still selling a litre for between N710 and N720 there is already an incentive because the price difference is very wide. So people will want to buy at N750 and put it in some kegs and move to the nearest border to sell.
We are tackling this effectively through collaboration. The agency that is involved in this is the NNPC and the Nigerian Downstream Midstream Regulatory Agency. We are collaborating with them to ensure that we monitor in real time the trucking of products from their depots and when we see those that are moving across the border areas, we act immidiately.
We’ve achieved success in tackling smuggling
We launched a special Operation about three weeks ago and I must say that we have had tremendous successes in arresting them, getting to their cartel, dislodging them and making them run out of business. Just today, somewhere around Badagry, we saw a particular situation where the owner of a filling station constructed a hole in the wall and then crossing the nuzzle from the dispenser right through the hole into some jerry cans behind the scene. We got credible intelligence and we located them. In places like Kebbi, there are tankers that are destined, from the papers that they have to go to places like Plateau, Kwara and Oyo, but you’ll find them in Kebbi and some of them with faux papers. I was in Adamawa two weeks ago and we saw that these products were moving in tankers so we are getting collaboration and understanding of people in border communities that it might be a little difficult for them during this operation but Nigerians stand to benefit if we stamp out smuggling of PMS in the country.
Verification for private jet owners
We started the verification exercise on Wednesday but recall this was not the first time we did it. We did something close to this in 2019 and the exercise fetched us as much as N2 billion within the short time that we did it. We discovered that there are more private jets that are operating in Nigeria but have not been brought under the ambit of the law. So the data that we get from Nigeria Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA) shows that only very few of them paid Customs duty for to operate in Nigeria. The International Aviation Law Regulation says if they are here for a brief period into the Nigerian air space and go, they are not obliged to pay any duty if they are here on a temporary importation visit but once they are here and used within Nigeria, they are liable to pay duty and so the verification exercise was just for us to confirm those operating within the ambit of the law and those that are operating outside it. Very few of them have showed up for verification and we gathered intelligence that a good number of them started leaving Nigeria since the announcement was given because they would not want to be verified. It is assumed that when you bring in an aircraft and you register, the next thing will be for you to come to the Nigeria Customs and account for the Customs duty if you are going to make use of the aircraft in Nigeria.
We have seen so many of these aircraft flying and our records show that only few of them have shown up to pay duty and this is why we are binging this verification up.
Customs providing statistics to support government’s planning, budgeting processes
Last year was declared by the International Customs Community as the year for data and since then, we have leveraged on that to put our focus on the use of data in our operations. When you get data right, you can plan accurately and predict trends and what is going to happen next in terms of Customs operations. Customs seats on a lot of data for imports, exports and transits. Through this data, we could generate a lot of intelligence for government and we are already doing that and it is part of what we are already doing with the PMS data. We were able to launch the operation that I talked about and that is resulting into lots of seizures of smuggled PMS. So we needed to work with government agencies specifically those that have the responsibility of producing these statistics, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS). We also need to do a lot of capacity building because there is a lot of capacity gap in the area of data analytics.
First year in office
We are making a lot of efforts to make sure we address welfare issues. In terms of remuneration, working conditions, adequate payment of houses when due and even in terms of reviewing the basic salary of officers, efforts are in progress and I want to believe that by the third quarter of 2024, we will make some of these known to officers to serve as motivation for them. But there are other things that are associated with welfare like promotion which used to be stagnant. But now, working with the board of the NCS, we had an understanding that every first of January, we are releasing the promotion letters of officers that deserve it. We have done it in January 2024 and we are hoping that by January 2025, the next batch of officers will benefit and they would be paid salaries commensurate with their new rank.
Tackling corruption
We can’t run away from that fact when you entrust some people with some money that sometimes there could be temptation for them to want to compromise but we already have a very strong machinery to counter that, which is automation.
The application of technology in our operations makes it easy for us to track what anybody has done on the system because virtually all our operations are now automated so it becomes very easy to know what some one did on the system within one or two months even one year ago.
So they all know we can carry out audit any time and get them and we are actually getting them not just Customs officers but also stakeholders who may be compromising our system for their nefarious activity.
Some Customs officers have been alleged to be involved in smuggling too. Are you looking into that?
Not just smuggling but also any officer that compromises his position will have to be punished. There are not two ways about it; we have very clear processes for punishment, so it is not just talking about it on social media that they did this and that. We have established processes that we have to bring this kind of officers to book.
Other News
Have you received any report and what actions have you taken?
Of course we have. What I’m trying to say is that it is not an event but it is a process. It will follow some kind of procedures. We will have to send them off, give them the charges, they defend themselves and we met out appropriate decisions and the Board takes these decisions. The Board of course ratifies before we implement.
What is your revenue projection in the next one year since you have been able to achieve N4.49 trillion in the past one year?
We did N4.49 trillion in the last one year. The time line we used was my one year in office. Now, we have the target for 2024, which stands at N5.1 trillion approximately. We have already gone half way by the end of May. We are optimistic that we would meet this target come December.
