Mr Tony Iju Nwabunike, is the National President of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA). In this interview with Oluyinka Onigbinde, he speaks on some of the efforts to restore peace in the association and other sundry issues.
“The CRFFN POF will actually take care of our welfare”
What are some of the steps you have taken to tackle some of the problems facing members of your association, especially as regards trade facilitation?
The first is that we put our house in order and have formidable freight forwarders and customs brokers to tackle our problems. Our members are not happy because they are thinking that they have given us mandate and that we are not utilizing it.
So, I want to shed-off this local politics and face the actual politics and this January alone, I have visited the Ministry of Transport, I have visited the SGF and we are going to meet the Ministry of finance next week, we are going to meet SON, we are going to meet NAFDAC, and even the Comptroller General of Customs and the National Assembly on this issue, we want to tackle; there are too many problems in the industry.
We learnt that there is a cold relationship between you and the camp that supported you during the crisis, and that many of them are now aggrieved that you have dumped them for those who were against you from the beginning?
My right as an executive President is to carry everybody along and work in tandem with the National Executive Council (NECOM) of the association, if anybody is not happy, sorry about that, we are appealing that they should be, we need to come together to have a formidable association.
I am telling you, we are going beyond ANLCA to go and meet other associations, I am not only talking about ANLCA now, so if anybody is not happy, I will plead with them to be happy, I am going to have this as a serious concern to tell them to be happy and let’s move forward and if there is any reason for them not to be happy, I will correct it, so I don’t want you to dwell so much on that.
But why are you working with those who worked against your coming in as the President?
As far as I am concerned, I was inaugurated on 14th of April 2018, on that day of inauguration, I became the President of everybody.
When are you visiting the Chapters, because these are some of the issues and the committee set up by you to harmonize all the issues; when are they submitting their report?
The committee is submitting their report end of this week, and moving to chapters will be a secondary thing, as the president what I do is to meet with governmental parastatals, the chapters meet their Customs Area Controllers and they send report to us, if there is any reason they cannot solve their problem, they will let me know, that is why some of the problems they have articulated are the things I am taking to Abuja to resolve for them and that is the way I want to run it.
As a president, you don’t expect me to begin to go to Apapa all the time whereas I have Apapa Chairman, or go to Tin Can whereas I have the Tin Can Chairman and any other chapters, until the chairman now tells me that my attention is needed there, then I go there and that is the way I want to run it.
FG has set revenue target of N2 trillion for the Customs, do you think this is realizable.
First of all, ANLCA is even against the federal government giving the Nigeria Customs Service a target, this is the only country that is setting target for their customs, the Customs Service is supposed to facilitate trade and ensure security of goods and services of people in and out of the country, and moreover to maintain the standard of import guidelines and procedures.
This issue of setting target for customs is making them weary and putting them under pressure, the Federal Government should look for trade facilitation, Customs should not be an inland revenue or VAT agency, they should for goodness sake allow customs to work according to the standard of World Customs Organization, they should look into the proper nomenclature of how customs is set up and that is the truth of the matter, because the issue is very clear; by the time you give them revenue target, have you targeted the inflow of goods and services into the country? What is their revenue projection; the number of cargoes coming into the country that would enable us generate that revenue? Then again are they trying to impress people to import more when the government is preaching export and local manufacturing, it negates each other.
They are indirectly telling customs to start giving unnecessary taxations that is criminal, if for example you tax people negatively, it becomes a criminal matter, so why is the federal government of Nigeria putting customs under pressure with revenue generation, they should allow customs to relax to do their work in line with World Customs Organization (WCO) standard.
Then now that they have been given target, I still want the Customs not to be overzealous in getting their revenue surpassed, because that would give them strength to start issuing multiple alerts, demand notices, and multiple customs units; all in the name of meeting their target and they would become aggressive unnecessarily and even getting to the market to search for goods that have already got into the market, so I am strongly against it.
Secondly, Customs can never raise any revenue without the help of the declarant and who is a declarant? The declarant are the customs brokers who actually use their license in generating revenue on behalf of their customers.
So, it is something that we need to sit together with them if they really know the stuff we are made of, because we are the declarant and we factor out how to go about it.
Are you pushing for a kind of percentage from the revenue?
No, for example before now, we were pushing for percentage because we were supposed to have percentage on that, but because Council of Registered Freight Forwarders (CRFFN) is coming with the POF, it’s going to be an aberration for us to begin to talk about any percentage again, whereas the CRFFN POF will actually take care of our welfare, it’s going to take care of the training of our members and insurance. So I think through CRFFN that can be taking care of.
What we learnt is that Government does not share money with anybody
If left for me alone, I must tell you we don’t even intend to share money with government, we are not even asking them that, in fact let me tell, you if they want to increase their revenue what they would have done is to tell us per declarant we are going to give you two percent, so people like me who have multi businesses to do with some little, though the turn over may be high but the profit is very low.
For example, if you have Total, Exxon Mobil and the rest of them as your customers, the volumes are heavy but the profit maybe very little, but by the time they say okay, if you make $1 billion CIF, that we are adding one percent or half percent of that, my brother I will go home smiling every year. So if The Federal Government should do that, even POF they should discard it no problem about it, but we need to be given some little percentage of whatever percentage they are generating. Likewise, they should encourage customs in that area too.
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