“Many Of Those Freight Forwarders Put 2A, Maybin Street As Their Office Address”
Prince Olayiwola Shittu is an interviewer’s delight; any day. He spoke last week at a ceremony to mark his first 100 days in office as National President of Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents. He seized the opportunity to address certain current industry issues. Enjoy it
On the Service providers and continued use of Risk Assessment Report (RAR)
I need to call the attention of government to scrap the service providers and the services of using RAR, this is one thing on the front burners for us now, I am not talking about scanning machine or scanning process which will soon be handed over to the Customs, but RAR as an instrument of clearing has lost its relevance, the reason being that if you put in your invoice no matter what your name is and how authentic your invoice is, the service providers have over time been jacking up the value. At the bottom of the document, they will say their opinion of the value on a daily basis, they are jacking up their one percent because the more money they collect, the, more the money they will be able to get from their one percent, and again the RAR is not even a final document, they tell us it is advisory. So after jacking up all these, Customs will still tell you that value is low, so what is the relevance of RAR? Sincerely let us ask ourselves if a RAR is still useful, because when they started, it was supposed to be the instrument for the payment of duty, but now Customs don’t look at it because government has given them a target and any other instrument does not matter, they can just look at your goods and say no the value is low, its either you leave it there or you pay the difference and move. Because Custom percentage income also is based on total revenue collection and at the same time government says this is the target you must meet, so it’s a contradiction with trade facilitation, you cannot facilitate trade and at the same time have what they call a target, its like you telling a supermarket manager to generate a certain amount daily, is he the one in control of the number of people that comes to the market? Is he going to go outside and capture people? That is what we are seeing in Customs now. In order for them to meet their revenue target, what they all do now is increase value and collect money, so the question we ask ourselves is: is the revenue from Customs the only one for Nigeria’s sustenance? Because what they have turned Customs officers to now is akin to forcing people to pay. We made some investigations in the West coast and between now and December and we found out that 60 percent of Nigeria bound goods are going to end up in other ports in West Africa because of this forceful collection of money. The customs recently set up a revenue monitoring committee and do you know what these guys do, they sit by their computers everyday and monitor how much is collected at different ports daily, there is nothing wrong with that, but when they discover that what Apapa collected last week is more than this week which means revenue is dropping, they will want to remove the CAC who will in turn jack up the value, this is not helping Nigerian economy because at the end of the day, it is the consumers out there that will pay. It has never been worse than this, we all know that Customs is used to having targets, but if a target is unrealistic are you going to force it? So when goods move to West Africa even if our members cannot go and clear it there, we will wait for them at Seme border and still do our job. I am talking not only for myself because at the level of Joint Action Committee of Freight Forwarders, we have forwarded to the minister of transport the solution for revenue generation, we are already meeting with CRFFN to issue out the charges for freight forwarders to determine how much do you pay a freight forwarder for his services and we are going to publicize it. If an importer decided to pay an agent more than this, it is his own headache, in doing that we are also asking the Customs service to issue a benchmark for their collection, Customs has what they call data bank, but they keep it a secret, let them publicize that data bank so that an importer can know how much he is going to pay, let the government also help so that all these shipping companies will have a one stop shop so that there will not be any brigandage, the brigandage is the system of forcing people to collect money and the non usage of alternatives. I thank God that the last week the CG of Customs also complained that he is getting worried about extortion by Customs officers. Almost 80 percent of bad jobs in the port are done by uniform people sent by the government to go and do the right thing. So it is important that we re-visit our system of clearance, RAR as an instrument of clearing is not relevant any longer.
On Cargo Tracking Note
Everybody continue to say CTN is going to help us, but can they tell us what value CTN has added to us, up till now? Otherwise there will be no need for 100 percent examination of containers, there will be no need for officers from FOU detaining goods because CTN is supposed to tell you what is inside the container, everybody is looking for opportunity to make money. I even had that somebody is already packaging something for the federal government on how to replace Customs with something else, we all know they have tried it in the past and they are still not relenting, we want to help and that is why you find out that the associations of before is not the ones you have now. NPA does not need that money, if for the past six months they say they have just got about Euro1.5million, it then means that the 40 percent will translate to about Euro1.2billion, this is the attraction and not the one going to the government.
We have also told the government to remove many things Nigeria cannot produce from the import prohibition list because when it is not prohibited, it is no longer attractive for smuggling, and the present Customs management has even agreed with us, but the government is reluctant, there is non among the dress we are wearing today that is made in Nigeria, and we put it under prohibition, yet it is a necessity for us.
Now let me be emotional about profiling, as a licensed customs agent, over the years we have been paying our duties regularly, like myself, it was only recently here in Apapa that they raised DN for me, what other profile do I need if over the years, they have not raised a DN, at a particular stage of this operation of profiling, they profile everybody and ask you to come and prove yourself, its like when the police captures everybody and ask you to prove that you are not a thief, so at what stage will Customs announce the companies that have scaled through, have you heard such announcement? So at what end do you justify that a Nigerian is honest, I have clients who have never touched their documents and sometimes they give them DN, some officers are not only over zealous they are over-reaching themselves and it gives room for corruption. When a man wants to give you a DN of N10million and you know that with N5million you can get away from it, but what will be your attraction, we have gone ahead to tell the CG and he has set up two desks of two officers and that anytime we have such issues we should call them so that they will respond quickly before it gets out of hand, but for those days that you have lost, you will pay demurrage for your shipping company, trailer demurrage and these are not business- friendly at all, There will be a time when Nigeria will become like Cotonou and all of us can go back to sleep and work from the office, but the people benefiting from the corruption don’t want e-payment to work. For the project works that I do there are some companies who give me five years contract, one just renewed the five years contract now and I know how much they paid me because it is an agreed business contract and so I protect their interests. These days, I am supposed to sit in my office and do all these transaction, but it wouldn’t work because everybody wants to go to the port and come back home with something.
Alleged arrests of ANLCA members for fraud in the port
As I am sitting here as president, within these 100 days, I can not count how many people have claimed to be ANLCA members. I will tell you what is happening in the port, when it suits them, they will claim to be members of ANLCA, when it does not suit them and whenever they ask them to come and pay their practicing fees they will change association, this is so because the port is filled with people of different speciality, if I am in the port today my speciality is as a licensed customs agent, when a transporter goes there, his speciality is transportation. There are so many people in the ports, that do not have speciality, but because there exists some commercial licenses and if you investigate you will find out they are owned by big men up there who loan it out and collect money every month and those are the stamps that they use to carry out their jobs including some of the officers too, it is when the deal goes wrong that they claim to be ANLCA members, we on our own tried to use our broach to be able to identify ANLCA members at a glance, but do you know what, they are now in the hands of non- ANLCA members, so we have to stop sale. If anybody is caught forging document they will say they are members of ANLCA, is it the association that ask him to forge documents, that is why our maxim here is ‘fraud at your own risk’ even if the person says I am his father, the fact remains that whoever perpetrated fraud will face the music.
A compendium for registered freight forwarders
The CRFFN is already going to have a compendium of registered freight forwarders, there are provisions in the CRFFN Act on how to discipline and prosecute a freight forwarder, now the CRFFN has already established a committee called CFCC which has representations of presidents of associations, its duty it is to advice the CRFFN, what this means is that if somebody says he is ANLCA member and I recommend that they deregister the person and prosecute the person and he leaves because CRFFN is going to have a tribunal and the tribunal is to try offences perpetrated under that Act. For us in ANLCA to do it in isolation will not yield results, what has been happening is that when ANLCA disciplines a member, he gets up to join NAGAFF or any other association the next day and he is accepted, this is the situation in which we have found ourselves in the industry today. But, with the grasp by CRFFN to handle what we are talking about, it beholds on us to recommend to the council to use the big stick, and I think that will help us to sanitize otherwise we can only be making noise. If we have the power of a body that is legal and has enforcement, we will get results quicker than for me being the president of an association.
A list of fraudulent or clearing agent/customs officers
We got the list, but we were prevailed upon to allow the management of these different bodies to have it first, but if they cannot satisfy us then we can begin to talk, but I can tell you that many of them have been transferred from the ports, if you ask Dikko (CG, Customs) he will tell you because we are collaborating, they have moved the officers from the ports and it was noted on their file that they were removed for fraudulent activities. Dikko said anybody that we bring his name is leaving the following day and most of the people on that list are already there, so if they have not taken action, I still have copies of the list and I would have brought it out, but since action is taken then what do you want me to do. So going to publish it will be like breaking the confidence that we have because they called us and solicited that we should send them the list, I think this is a better way to handle it than to just play to the gallery.
On the current face –off by a group with the CRFFN
It is surprising that those who claim to be the benefactor of the CRFFN; those who claim to be the fathers of the Council and that they were the only person that organized for the Act to come out are the same people who are now saying that the Council can not work, why, because the Council cannot meet personal interests. What else do you want this Council to do, it says if you want to be a freight forwarder or you are already a freight forwarder then you should apply over a period, at the end of the day, we had 5,000 people; both individuals and the corporate bodies. No one knew anything went wrong, we just felt that individuals were applying which is what we should expect, the Council (in carrying out its statutory role) now says that before we can give you a number as a registered freight forwarder (RFF), you must verify whatever you had claimed in your application, at that stage some people did not want to show up, then the Council went a step further and gave a website address in case you want to change what you claimed in your application, which means if you call yourself a PhD holder and you know it is a ‘Tokunboh’ then use the opportunity to state your real qualification, so what is wrong with that? Is there anything wrong with the Council that was established by government for the purpose of sanitizing freight forwarding to encourage people to pay their taxes? So is it wrong if they ask you to bring your tax clearance certificate? After all, it has been said that all transactions must be accompanied by your tax clearance now, is it wrong for you to come and show your certificates, yet some people are saying it is cumbersome. It is not cumbersome because we have discovered that the chief campaigner against CRFFN was the one who recruited thousands of the 5,000 applicants who have no business being in the port and he wants to justify their registration by any means whatsoever and that is the only reason. If I applied for registration, I should be able to go and show what I applied with and they even gave you the room to show the qualifications that you have, so it is the same problem we have with the industry.
You remember that one of the associations during the time of registration for this CRFFN was collecting N5, 000 from people, but not ANLCA of course even though I was not here that time, why are you sponsoring somebody professionally, are we going to remain in the system for life and this our job which is a profession must not be professionalized. When CRFFN was to be formed, the Act mandated Shipper’s Council to supervise elections into the governing council and Shippers Council says that if you know that you are operating in the ports, come and register, so some companies registered, but let us be factual, can you be a freight forwarder without customs license? We seem to be shying away from what is responsible for the decadence. Who is a freight forwarder, the Act says you start and end the process across international borders, at what stage do you now remove yourself that you are not doing this or that and yet you call yourself a freight forwarder. I started by telling you that when it comes to what they call the logistic chain, there are specialists. I don’t have transportation arm, but there is a company that does that for me, but if I buy trailers today and I want to go into the transportation, all I need to do is to write to the CRFFN, and if I am a transporter and I want to go into clearing, I will go and get a Customs license and write to CRFFN so that if they are listing license customs agent I will belong there too, it is because it wasn’t specific in the Act that you must demand for Customs license that is why you see everybody applying to be registered, but in sorting it out what do we do, you want to tell me that you are a professional freight forwarder and you don’t have an office and you want CRFFN to register you, Many of them put their office at number 2 Maybin street, not because we know where it is, let me tell you that this chairman has bent backwards to take along the suggestions of people and some of us in ANLCA said we should not quarrel so that they will not say it is ANLCA, even we in ANLCA disagree when we are in the Council meeting , it is not an ANLCA issue and the law did not put it that it is specifically for license customs agents so why are we going to fight? When the Shipper’s Council conducted that election some people including Lucky Amiwero felt that popularity will give them sympathy, but the reality was not the same. ANLCA did not sponsor people, everybody who stood for the election did so on their own merit, Tony Iju won the election, and not because he was sponsored by ANLCA the only thing is that he is an ANLCA member.
So it was when they failed that they started looking at loopholes and were thinking that another election is coming where they will go to the stadium and say everybody should line up and they will have a crowd behind them, the CRFFN is a regulator of the profession and there must be minimum standards, some of them can be accommodated because experience is part of the qualifications, but why don’t you want to become a company instead of putting your name under an association address.
Anybody who is saying that it is about persons and not about companies is telling you lies because; nobody went to the school of freight forwarding, its unlike other professions, it is not just individuals, but the companies must be there. As a lawyer, you could be registered by NBA, even, if you don’t have a chamber because you are a professional. Nigeria will get to that stage where there will be a University degree in freight forwarding and logistics, there are so many people in other business lines today who even have degrees in logistics, but somebody must be identified, if you don’t have an office then what kind of job do you do in the port? You just flow in the port so that somebody can fall victim of you, you eat the money and go away without trace, it is definitely not acceptable. What CRFFN have given the associations now is just a provisional registration; it is after the verification exercise that you can now scale through and become a registered freight forwarder.
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