Comptroller Dera Nnadi is the Customs Area Controller of the Tin Can Island Port Command. He is also the Coordinator of the Time Release Study (TRS). In this interview, he sheds light on a variety of issues bordering on Customs and port operations.
Stakeholders have often expressed worry over the turnaround time and cargo clearance hurdles in Nigerian ports, compared to ports of neighbouring countries. What is your take on this?
We have been relying on just the hearsay. So, you see people say, in country A, who are our closest neighbors, it takes just X, Y, Z days to clear cargo and in Nigeria, this is what it takes. There was no scientific evidence, no study to back-up how many days it takes. Nobody can tell you specifically that this is how many days it takes and that is the essence of this study. I cannot say it takes this number of days, but of course there is average. By our system, every declaration has what we call a history; the moment you launch your declaration in the system, the time you need for the examination is there. And the time it takes you to remove that cargo out of the port is also there. However, besides Customs, there are other players and that’s the essence of the Time Release Study. And that is why the time-release study is being conducted in conjunction with the National Trade Facilitation Committee of Nigeria, which comprises all government agencies in the port and our major stakeholders; freight forwarders, shipping companies, terminal operators and others. So, if it takes an hour to clear a particular cargo through customs, we need to study how many hours it will take to exit the port. If it takes 30 minutes for somebody to approach a shipping company to get his TDO, we need to study how long it takes a truck driver to exit the port.
So, as it stands now, all you hear is that it takes this number of days, but it’s not backed by science or any study. So, I’m not going to give you any figures, until we conclude this study. We have already seen some results and we have some figures. What we have here shows what we have so far achieved with the study. We already have our records, we have our study, but I think it will be inappropriate to release it without passing through the management of Customs. So, it is better, I crave the indulgence to wait. We already have our data. We’ve turned them into graphics. We are currently conducting analysis, trying to put figures against realities that we have seen. But let me say that the essence of this study is to see those people that can clear their cargo in an hour and those that say it took them several days and we get an average. So that we can say that this is scientifically backed. Rather than say in Ghana it takes this number of days, in Nigeria it takes XYZ and in Cotonou it takes this. You can now say that scientifically it has been proven. By the way, all the questionnaires given out for this study are kept so that by the time the result is published, any independent person can ask for them for verification. Every record and every interaction are being kept. Permit me to wait until we formally submit this report to the management of Customs, who will share with WTO and the National Trade Facilitation Committee.
The federal government has magnanimously excluded certain food items and pharmaceuticals from paying duty. Would this not affect Customs meeting their revenue target?
Let me say that the items that were removed, particularly pharmaceuticals, if you read that policy, it is not every pharmaceutical that were removed from payment. There were mainly precursor items that you can manufacture in order to encourage local production. They were mainly machinery and equipment that you can deploy in order to encourage local manufacture. Most essential pharmaceutical products in the port were coming in under zero duty. So, it’s not necessarily a new policy, so to say. It’s just that it has been expanded. Most essential pharmaceuticals were anti-malaria drugs, they don’t pay duty. So, let us get this clear. You also spoke about rice, maize, and beans, I want to commend the federal government for that initiative.
Don’t forget, there is a window for it which is 150 days, so if you are asking how it will affect revenue, let us wait.
Stakeholders have complained that the Nigerian economy is in crisis because we are more comfortable with import than export. What is your take on this?
The sign for the development of any country is when they export more than they import. Unfortunately, based on our current economic status and national development, we tend to import more. But all hope is not lost, from the data I gave from Tin Can alone, you can see that even though our target in Tin Can for import is N1.4 trillion we have succeeded in exporting just in the first half of this year, N1.02 trillion. That means we have done just a little bit. By the way, this is just for the first half of the year. Whereas our target for import revenue is N1.4 trillion for the whole year and in the first half of the year 2024 for export, we have already recorded N1.032 export value, which means we are not doing badly as it should be. However, I just came back from a summit by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria, a three-day summit held in Abuja. Part of what some of us advocated was the value addition for our exports. Currently, if you notice, the majority of our export is either oil and gas or agricultural produce. Some of us, and indeed the majority of Nigerians, are advocating that there should be value addition to our cocoa, cashew nuts, palm oil, and our shea butter before they are exported. We are gradually getting there. Of course, I know of a particular company in Nigeria that turns their soya beans into a paste. That means the oil from that soya bean is kept in Nigeria while soya bean paste is exported. That’s value addition and that’s what we expect more in Nigeria. In terms of other exports, let me say that most of our manufactured products that are exported are exported under the informal sector and therefore getting statistics for you is always not optimized.
I worked in Seme for seven months and I know the volume of what we call diminished items, that is what the WCO says are small items that you think are insignificant, but when collected together means so much. You need to see the number of women who tie rubber slippers, plastics at their back and cross the border on a daily basis. This is export. You need to see the number of people that carry just one crate of soft drink on their head and cross the border on a daily basis. That is exports. You may think they are insignificant, but indeed, in a year, if you collect the volume, you will see that we are not doing badly. You also need to see the volume of Cement exported through our border by the likes of Dangote Cement. You will also see that we are not doing badly. Even our rubber slippers, our plastics, travel as far as the Congo Democratic Republic. So, all hope is not lost. We are not doing badly.
Why it appears that we are doing badly in exports is because our population is so large. So, what we produce is not even enough for us to consume, not to talk of exporting. Sometimes, when people want to compare Nigeria, I laugh. You will see them comparing Nigeria with Singapore. Yes, Singapore is industrialized. Their ports are very efficient. We appreciate them for that. But what is the population of Singapore? The entire Singapore is just 6 million people. Some people have argued that what about America that is also big. Why are they doing so well? But you should also think about how good America has been. So, I will want us to appreciate that. We appreciate Nigeria as a country. Some people will tell you about South Africa. What is their population? 55 million people. Egypt, 80 million people or 88 million. So, but compare with Nigeria. Or you compare Nigeria with Ghana or with Benin Republic who are just 13 million people. I even saw one statistic where somebody was comparing Nigeria with Seychelles and Botswana. Botswana is not even up to 3 million people. Seychelles is not up to 1.5 million people. In 2010, when I had a joint conference with people from Seychelles in South Africa, they told me they were about 7 million people and we are comparing Nigeria with such an economy. I think we should learn to be patriotic, that when we do such comparisons, we should rate all indices rather than just select a few indices and use it to talk down on our own development and achievement.
What are the challenges faced with the Time Release Study?
The greatest challenge we had was apathy. Just like every other research. The port is a very dynamic environment. People are always in a hurry to clear their goods and leave the port. Imagine stopping an agent who is rushing to a shipping company and you give him a questionnaire and say, Sir, help me complete this. He doesn’t even understand why you are stopping him. He may, out of courtesy collect it and say, I will do it. He will not do it. Some will collect and complete anything they like. So, you see us going about trying to see how we can encourage them to adapt this study. There are many of them that have embraced it. At the Marriott Hotel, we launched the study and we invited them. During what we call the scoping mission, when we are educating people on what they should do, we invited all the freight forwarding associations. They came physically to be with us. We also conducted about five online workshops with them. We organized Zoom meetings. We said for those who could not come to join us in the hall, anywhere you are, just to get more people to get and embrace it, we also got them to join us on Zoom. However, the port is quite big. Nigeria is really big. We targeted 600 survey questionnaires. That’s what they said we should use as the sample. But on our own, we increased it to over 1000, knowing the population of Nigeria. And I am glad that we received significant responses from those people.
What are your achievements so far with the Time Release Study?
The greatest achievement is that we even started this study and that we had the buy-in of the majority of the stakeholders in the industry. And that so far, so good, we’ve been able to see our survey questionnaires and we’ve come up with reasonable data that we have shared with the WCO. The full achievement for this is the awareness that there is a need for us to conduct this study. It is the awareness that Nigerians now know that we need to back whatever explanation we are giving to them with scientific facts.
There have been lots of issues concerning fluctuations in Customs Duty and exchange rate
As long as we continue to import, we continue to put pressure on the currency that is used as means of exchange in international trade. But let me say that it’s not just peculiar to Nigeria. Since COVID 19, till the time that we went into the wars between Russia and Ukraine, global economies all over the world are facing their consequences in terms of imports. So again, all hope is not lost. What I think we should be doing is to promote those opinions that will rather bring hope in our trade environment. It just takes one statement to crash everything. So sometimes what we think is insignificant may cause greater damage. Remember that somebody was also banned from speculating on the exchange rate of Naira. There was a particular private company that was speculating on the exchange rate of Naira. And the federal government saw that that particular action, people were believing it more than the statistics being issued by CBN and they were using that one for speculation. They had to stop it. So, we should also be careful with some of the things we say.
What have you done to simplify trade in Tin Can Island Port that led to this result?
We have a robust dispute resolution team in Tin Can, led by the PRO and the DC Revenue and sometimes the CAC participates. We have stakeholders’ engagements. We declare 2024 as the year of stakeholders. We have recently introduced suggestion boards for those who will not be bold enough to face us. But above all, the continental declaration during the CG conference helped a lot. Some of those issues that were raised there such as, multiple alerts should stop, multiple interventions should stop, have added and aided confidence in our ports.
How do you handle non-compliance?
Of course, the law is there. The Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023 is there. I also wish to request that in one of your quarterly breakfast meetings, you choose that particular topic for discussion. It is a virgin area that we need to explore.
What incentive plans does the Customs have for officers who have achieved all these milestones.
What I have done in Tin Can, in my modest way, is to recognize them and give them certificates of recognition. Some of those that have benefited are here. So, everybody that has done so well in Tin Can, through their contributions to what you have achieved, received a certificate of merit. We also hope that such a gesture will be extended, even at national level by the management of Customs. Of course, CG has said it several times, that he will reward competency and contributions to our growth and he has done it already. During the last promotional exercise. Some people benefited from accelerated promotion. We have an officer that even moved from Chief Superintendent of Customs and became Deputy Controller. We also have somebody that moved from Superintendent of Customs to Assistant Controller. So, we have had such developments and we appreciate the C G. and we hope that it will also be extended to the latest officers that have contributed.
You once made mention of plans to extend port operations to the night.
One of the things that the stakeholders told us was stopping them from engaging in night port operations was their safety and security. When I probe further with my colleagues about what they meant by that, we found out that the inaccessibility of the port access road then for the past 13 years, made movements across the corridors of the port almost impossible to the extent that stakeholders; when they are driving to work, they can be attacked because of the traffic and bad roads. And in the night, you cannot trust the Okada rider that will take you home. So what happened was that people would come to work and once it is 3-4pm, they want to close and go home. So we looked at that when I resumed here, I recalled what we did when I was DC Enforcement. I wrote a memo suggesting that we should revive movement of goods through the waterways using barges. it was adopted and it reduced the pressure on our road. But coming back to Tin Can as the Area Controller after almost five years, I found out that the port access road was still congested and that meant 13 years of congestion on the road.
There’s no way Nigeria can say that they are offering service delivery and are competing in such a situation. So we worked together with my colleague, we had several meetings. We talked to our management and with the support of Nigerian Police and the Lagos State government, we started sensitizing. So the first thing we did was to keep creating the consciousness using the media; that this road needs to be decongested and luckily NPA collaborated with us and today, the road had been cleared. Having cleared down the road, we got the assurance of stakeholders that they would now be coming to work. So the best we could do was to extend our working hours and we started with the scanning sites. So we started scanning containers overnight for 24 hours and luckily the stakeholders embraced it. We did not extend it to physical examination due to obvious reasons. What are those reasons? We need to light up the port and the corridors. We need to provide security. I also recommended that they should light up the access roads. These are the efforts we have made
