Alhaji Babatunde Mukaila is the immediate past chairman of ANLCA’s Association Electoral Committee (ASECO). He is also Managing Director, Mickey Excellency Nigeria Limited; a customs brokerage firm. In this interview with Shipping Position Daily in Lagos last week, he talked about customs brokerage in Nigeria and Benin Republic, as well as issues surrounding the controversial Professional Operating Fees and other issues. He also talked about ANLCA.
“My successor is a successful lawyer, cool-headed and I know he will succeed, he is qualified and I am proud of him”
As an expert in freight forwarding and customs brokerage in Nigeria, do you think doing business in ports of neighbouring countries is better than in Nigerian seaports?
Yes, of course, because it is an international trade practice that you do transit. For instance, Niger Republic uses Nigerian ports, Chad does the same and such people don’t pay a dime in the process; Those countries are land lock; they don’t have seaports and as a result, they drop their consignments here and then move it by road to their country. What they only pay is the terminal charges for the sake of using their terminal for the time been pending when the truck will arrive and take delivery of the goods to their country and at times you see customs officers escorting the trucks to their country. Actually, I am a specialized cargo procedure agent and most times I don’t do the conventional clearing which most people do and I major in transit cargo, temporary importation of transit contracts for some people in Benin Republic who patronize our ports as well. The conventional clearing is not my specialty and what I am discussing with you is my own area of specialization. I also handle transit from Nigerian ports back to Benin Republic and even the process is strange to some Nigerian customs officers and I have been able to convince them that it is an international practice. A Cotonou shipper may decide to drop the cargo in Nigeria for one reason or the other; maybe as a result of the exchange rate over there which might be cheaper for them and what they have to do in Nigeria is just to pay handling charges at the terminal. That is what I am doing for some companies over there. It is a well-known practice in the world. It is always lucrative for Nigerian shippers to drop cargo in Cotonou with the promise to pay duty in Nigeria and then import through our ports.
What do you think is lacking in our customs when considering this kind of international trade?
What is actually lacking is the ability of our customs to make sure that such cargos pay the appropriate duty which might lead to compromise on their part.
Why do we have high volume of smuggled vehicles to Nigeria from Cotonou?
It’s still the same process of transit that we are talking about. Every cargo in that country is destined for transit. For instance, all the Lebanese and Indian car dealers at Cotonou always mark their Bill of Laden in transit, they will put a clause on the document and once it’s on transit, such vehicle is not meant for usage in that country. They use Cotonou as a market place for people to come and buy because clearly, it is not destined for that country and that is why you see Nigerians flocking there to buy new or used cars with promise to pay duty at our border commands of Customs. Benin Republic government discovered that such deal generates revenue for them and that is why they have no other means rather than to encourage such businesses for their national interest. They created an avenue for the car dealers to bring in cars and sell. They created a motor park outside the port which is not presumable here in our country; in the sense that once the vehicle arrives, they can move it some meters away from the port in order to avoid storage charges inside the port and government encouraged them by partitioning some spaces outside the ports for the dealers to display their vehicles for sale. Every Nigerian importer who has access to the port buys from the port which originally is the car park. Government of Benin Republic actually created car parks for those Asian dealers within their own port. It is left for the buyer or shipper as the case may be to pay duty at the border or smuggle the vehicles to Chad, Niger and even Nigeria. Benin Republic don’t have the money to buy such cars neither can the population accommodate the huge units of vehicles that enter the country on a daily basis through their port. What most of us fail to understand is that people think they clear vehicles from Cotonou, but that is not so; what they do is that they buy from the car dealers over there.
Why is it difficult for Nigerians to clear consignment from their ports when it is very easy for foreigners to clear their consignment from Nigerian seaports?
Nigeria is a free-for-all country, Lebanese has customs license, Indian has theirs, but in other climes a foreigner is not expected to be granted a license. The essence of such is to promote their indigenous operators by way of protecting their jobs which is supposed to be in the form of Cabotage and you just have to go through them, but in Nigeria all the multinationals have department for shipping and freight forwarding, they graduate from there, then move over to obtaining a license from the Customs and such is not done anywhere in the world, whereby a foreign takes a job meant for their citizens. All the multinationals in Nigeria are all clearing agents. What the multinationals are doing now is that they will mop up all the jobs and give us left over of those jobs. The bitter truth is that our government doesn’t know when to stop and when to move.
What actually informed your first resignation as ASECO Chairman?
The truth is that there is a committee in place, which is an ad – hoc committee and ASECO does not have a life span. In fact before I became ASECO Chairman, the longest serving committee usual don’t stay up to a year or a year and half, but close to seven years I have been the chairman of ASECO and after the elections I think I have done what I came in to do, thus giving the association a structure which is a liberal structure and it is left to members of ANLCA to keep the structure going or destroy it. Before my emergence as chairman of ASECO , there was no clear cut guideline as to what makes you qualify to run for a particular office, but when I came in I made very clear guidelines, because the guideline must be acceptable to all members of the association and I did that and we were able to say what makes you qualify before you could be able to run for any position, qualifications criteria and so despite some level of challenges ,we did some adjustment and left behind a clean document for electoral guidelines and after that I believe my job is done, I believe whoever is coming in have something to work with, but will just have to improve on it and that was why I decided to leave by saying the time was ripe for me.
But I recall vividly that you actually resigned then, but the national executive committee did not want you to leave; please tell us what actually transpired then?
There is nothing that happened, it is just that there are rules of engagement and at that particular period, surely we are all human and there are interest, there are godfathers but what I said earlier on was that there are clear-cut guidelines that it doesn’t matter where your interest lies it has to go through the black and white process. I noticed that the interest of the organ of the association is beclouding their judgment and I am at the centre of the storm, thus I resigned and because the principle of which I resigned was very clear, the members of the association rose up and said no – that whatever that is bringing the crisis is very clear which in turn made those with interest to back off. It is the members of the association that rose and said no, the board cannot tell us the rules because this is the rule and that’s the true story about it all. Like I said ASECO is an ad hoc committee.
Do you have any candidate that you would like him to succeed Prince Olayiwola Shittu as national president of ANLCA?
I think it is too early to pinpoint who should succeed Prince Shittu at this point in time, but every member of the association knows who should not succeed Prince Olayiwola Shittu because the guideline is very clear , the clout that he has brought in to the association is very clear, the flair, respect and the level he has taken the association to are some of the characteristics of what the office of the president should be and these are things that are known to every member of the association and so when the time is ripe, we should know the manner of person that will succeed him.
What is view about the alarm that was raised recently by Oodua Maritime Forum, saying that ANLCA has hijacked the body?
There is no correlation between Oodua Maritime Forum and ANLCA. ANLCA members are licensed by customs, while Oodua is a tribal pressure group. Likewise we have Igbo Maritime, Arewa, and others. Oodua is a pressure group and that is where it ends. Oodua cannot nominate a candidate to run for ANLCA elections, because the criteria like said is that you must be a licensed owner and once you don’t have that you don’t have any business in ANLCA. You can say whatever you want to say, but when the chips are down you don’t have anything to put on the table with ANLCA. Coming back to the issue that some people have hijacked Oodua and some people leaving ANLCA to NAGAFF I will say if any Yoruba goes to NAGAFF I will say there is no cause for alarm because the national president of that association is a Yoruba man who would want to bring that to bear; that I got some of my people to NAGAFF to buttress his position as president because this is the first time a Yoruba person is becoming the president of that association. But if the Oodua group is moving to NAGAFF, I would say there is freedom of association and NAGAFF have its criteria to accept them as freight forwarders.
How would you describe the new ASECO chairman?
My successor is a wonderful person. He has been an ASECO person on two different occasions, so he is not a grey horn. He knows what is called elections in ANLCA; in fact the new members of ANLCA ASECO have been members of ASECO before, but the difference is that none of them has been the chairman .My successor is a successful lawyer, cool headed and I know he will succeed, he is qualified and I am proud of him.
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