DTI Operators Feign Ignorance of Imminent Shut Down By Nigeria Customs

Even though Comptroller General of Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Alli (Rtd) has threatened to shut down operations of Direct Traders Input (DTI) cafes in the country by end of March 2016, operators of the cafes have denied being notified by customs, even as they blasted the service for being culpable in the fraud going on at the cafes.
‎DTI Cafes were commissioned in 2008 by Customs in order to allow importers or their agents to access the Customs ASYCUDA server and make declarations without being physically present at any Customs port.‎ Customs has however consistently in the last two years threatened to shut down DTI operations for allegedly being used to perpetuate economic fraud.
‎Speaking with Shipping Position Daily over the imminent shut down, a DTI operator at Apapa Port, Mr.Seyi Gbajabiamila of BRA Solutions Limited said it was not a new threat by customs, and that the current one by the CG of Customs; Hameed Alli has not been brought to the notice of operators.
Even though he admitted that fraud could occur at a DTI Cafe, Seyi noted that, there must be customs officers and the license owner’s involvement and consent before the ‘bad job’ could scale through.
‎”It is a propaganda, there is no way a DTI operator will go ahead and use someone else’s license without the knowledge or permission of the agent, definitely the agent that brought the job is the cause, anything fraudulent, DTI operators don’t have hands in it, except it is an insider”
“If you are going to look at corruption at DTI operations, you will first hold the customs because if you say they release someone’s job at a DTI cafe, how did they get the password, if not from an insider in customs?” Seyi stated.
He noted that mostly, it is possible for an agent to evade certain duty payments and CIF using a DTI Cafe, but what makes this to succeed is the collaboration of the agent and the customs where they would have reached an agreement before bringing it to the DTI.
“The operative in such an act has somebody behind him, it is not something he can just wake up to and implement on his own‎” he maintained.
Also speaking with our correspondent yesterday, another operator‎; Mr. Adelolu Suleiman of AMT Pro-Consult Limited‎ also denied knowledge of the imminent close down of DTI cafes by customs.
Suleiman said that there was no way a job can be captured at a DTI cafe without customs knowledge. According to him, customs could block a practicing license used to capture a fraudulent job, but suck blockade could be removed after the bad job is traced and the license owner proven innocent.
“You can use somebody’s license, but you have to seek their consent, either before or after you have brought the job to the DTI cafe. If the agency is used for bad job, customs has authority to block the agency, after the owners have complained, they would now trace the job, sometimes it is not traceable”
‎”As a DTI staff, we cannot do anything without customs, we are using customs server, they have every right to check any job and find out where it is coming from, they just gave us little access, they have all accesses” he said.
‎Suleiman noted that Nigeria Customs Service decided to license DTI cafes because the work load of capturing declarations was cumbersome on customs officers.
Shipping Position Daily reported last week that the Zone ‘A’ Coordinator of Customs, Comptroller Charles Edike had said during a visit to the secretariat of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), that customs would henceforth grant Direct Trader Input access only to licensed Customs agents.
The customs top brass also assured that the customs is upgrading its IT system from ASYCUDA ++ to ASYCUDA World. Edike assured that every licensed customs agent will now have passwords and private DTI’s and not in a café as it used to be.