Last Monday, the Nigeria Customs Service joined the rest of the world to celebrate the 2014 World Customs day. And as customary on such occasions to appraise oneself, beat one’s chest and court more friends, the Customs seized the opportunity to admonish operators and counsel stakeholders.
More importantly, the occasion offered the service the opportunity of telling Nigerian how benevolent the new Pre Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR).
Last Monday, the Nigeria Customs Service joined the rest of the world to celebrate the 2014 World Customs day. And as customary on such occasions to appraise oneself, beat one’s chest and court more friends, the Customs seized the opportunity to admonish operators and counsel stakeholders.
More importantly, the occasion offered the service the opportunity of telling Nigerian how benevolent the new Pre Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR).
The Customs Comptroller General; Alhaji Dikko Abdulahi Inde told stakeholders at the International Customs Day celebrations which held in Abuja last Monday that Nigeria’s PAAR has been acknowledged by the international business community as innovative and highly successful.
Dikko said at the 2014 in Abuja on Monday that the pre-shipment inspection now known as Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR).
He said that like PAAR, the Nigeria Trade Hub, also established by the government as part of platforms for facilitating trade in the country had been successful.
He said that uniqueness of the ‘PAAR’ method being applied by Nigeria had resulted in the influx of Customs officers and businessmen from foreign countries into the Nigeria Customs headquarters to understudy its ‘novelty’, as if it was.
But, that is not all about the Nigeria Customs Service of today. Beneath the seeming success is a barrage of undercurrents and schisms. All these are threatening the fabric of the service.
Even though issues that plague Customs today are not different from the ones that we all are used to, the Customs of today is apparently more daring and more ambitious.
Issues of succession, the termination of the contract of the destination inspection service providers which led to the introduction of PAAR and the controversial new Customs Bill have polarised the Service and pitched it against some powerful forces and also raised foes from within.
To start with, the first Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) was enacted in 1954 and since then, there had been many amendments, but there have never been any comprehensive efforts to get a completely new set of laws for the Nigeria Customs Service as the ones currently ‘under the knife’ at the National Assembly.
Going by the feelers from stakeholders, it does appear to us that the present leadership of the Nigeria Customs Service, goaded by the ‘team leader’, Alhaji Diko Abdulahi wanted a new-look Customs that will enjoy the autonomy that it had always craved for.
The supervisory minister of finance, Mrs Ngozi Okonjo Iweala has however spoken the mind of the Government when she told Senators that the Nigeria Customs Service can not operate outside the nation’s fiscal policy. The statement was a reaction to details of the Bill which she perceived as been too ambitious and wanting to put Customs beyond the reach if government’s supervision.
While it may be true that the Customs deserve a lot more say in its affairs, one is at loss as to why the Customs is so desirous of removing the influence of the minister of finance.
It is our conviction that the greatest challenge that is confronting the Nigeria Customs Service at the moment is succession.
The Customs has always been synonymous with in-fighting when it’s succession time.
Since the exit of Brigadier General Samuel Ango as the Sole Administrator in 1999, the Nigeria Customs Service has always had succession-related rancour. The emergence of Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu Mustapha in 1999 shortly before the return to democracy was divine, having been posted to Bauchi (away from reckoning at the headquarters). He emerged from there to clinch the position. The result was that many brilliant but ‘ambitious’ senior officers had to be retired to pave way for a peaceful reign for Mustapha. The ‘wounded’ officers didn’t allow him be as he was fought all through his four-year tenure.
Similarly, the emergence of Buba Gyang as Mustapha’s successor was no less rancorous. His name never came up in build up to the appointment. He was a compromise, of sort between the ‘hawks’ who had been penciled down and the ‘apostles of due process’. The hawks were the ‘Mustapha boys’, while the other group comprised of those who, ordinarily should rank high on the rating list by virtue of rank and experience, but who were not Mustapha’s confidants.
After Buba, there was Mr David Ogungbemile who acted as the CG Of Customs to pave way for Dr Bernard Shaw Nwadialor.
Not over yet, the emergence of Hamman Bello as the next CG witnessed perhaps the bitter-most fight as senior officers from the rank of Comptrollers engage one another in a game of survival and succession.
When out of the blues, Hamman Bello was appointed as the substantive Customs boss, very few people doubted the fact that it was an interregnum.
And so when the then-President, Alhaji Umar Musa Yar’ Adua appointed Diko Abdulahi Inde in 2009, there was apprehension about the future of the Service.
Sceptics (understandably) didn’t see a Diko as being capable of turning the service from an object of ridicule and plummeting .
Prior to his appointment, the Nigeria Customs Service got plummeted on all fronts, while it’s personnel are blamed for all shortcomings in the process of cargo clearance, be it at the ports or at other entry points.
While we gave it to Diko for rewriting the story hitherto ugly story of Customs, we are still not comfortable with the tradition of in-fighting over succession.
While not holding brief for Alhaji Diko Abdulahi Inde and the Nigeria Customs Service, it is safe to affirm that the Customs of 2014 is far better (in all ramifications) than that of 2009.
True to his words in 2009, the contact between the customs officers and the importers have been significantly reduced, hence reduction in corruption. At the present, the cargo clearance procedure is getting to the level where it will be possible for a clearing agent to make his or her declaration through the internet, make payments and get the consignment released without seeing the customs officer.
No doubt, the Service has done well in the last four (going to five) years, but the next one year will determine how well the Service can carry itself under the new dispensation of a wholly customs controlled destination inspection.
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