Strong indications have emerged that the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Retired Col. Hameed Ali may have issued the go-ahead for the service to begin moves to amend certain contentious aspects of the controversial Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) Act.
The CEMA amendment which was mooted during the regime of former President Goodluck Jonathan did not sail through owing to irreconcilable differences between the then-Minister of Finance and the then CG of Customs; Dr Ngozi Okonjo Iweala and Dikko Abdulahi Inde respectively.
However, one of our correspondents has confirmed that the incumbent Customs CG has already kicked-off the process that will lead to the review.
Customs Public Relations Officer, Deputy Comptroller Wale Adeniyi dropped the hint during a chat with some Nigerian maritime journalists in Accra, Ghana recently.
It would be recalled that the Senate Committee on Finance in 2013 under the Chairmanship of Sen. Ahmed Makarfi had submitted its report on a Bill for an Act to repeal the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA), 2004 and other Customs and Excise laws.
The 217-page draft bill which enjoyed major support of the Senators at that time was however not passed into law because the former Minister of Finance, Dr. Ngozi Okonjo Iweala kicked against certain aspects of the Bill, saying that it would make the Customs service, and by extension the Comptroller General too powerful.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the Nigeria Customs Service in some aspect of the bill was seeking greater autonomy and new statutory functions which could erode those of other agencies in the trade sector.
The abandoned CEMA also transferred certain statutory duties of the President and the Minister to the Customs CG.
But, the Customs PRO revealed that the service under Ali has resumed consultations with the 8th National Assembly on how to pass the Bill into law.
Already, Adeniyi said that Customs has held a retreat among its officers to review the aspects of the bill that needs to be amended.
“We started the process of getting advise, the option is for us to start all over, but we have gotten this far, what we had then was a different Assembly, so in the last interaction we had with the lawmakers, they are saying we have to start the provision all over”
“From Customs itself, we have done the first retreat, we looked at the provisions, what are those provisions that need amendment. My contribution to that retreat was to say, what are the areas of objections raised by the former Minister (Okonjo Iweala) about the Customs CG becoming too powerful, can we address those issues?”
“Was there so much power? Who is afraid of such powers? Can we water it down? And so on. So we have something that is near draft which we want to expose to stakeholders”.
The customs image maker said that the draft will soon be made available to relevant stakeholders to deliberate on the new law.
Speaking further, he said “we intend to do two stakeholders retreat and seminars to expose the document we have, get inputs and then we take it to the Ministry of Justice for submission as an executive Bill”.
The Bill seeks to reform the administration and management of Customs and Excise in Nigeria and to bring the CEMA Act of 1958 in line with modern day best practices.
The recommendations by the Senate Committee had included provisions in the bill to boost the financing of customs service operations.
The committee also recommended the “prohibition of mandatory pre-shipment and post-shipment inspections, as outlined in Clause 43 of the proposed legislation.
On Clause 43, it recommended that “the President may on the recommendation of the minister, approve the use of mandatory pre-shipment inspection services for Customs purpose.’’
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