The first Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) was enacted in 1953 and since then, there had been many amendments, but there have never been any comprehensive efforts to get a completely new set of laws for the Nigerian Customs Service.
Apart from failure to enact a new law, government has however over the years, inaugurated committees and task forces to either review or restructure the service; the latest being the one headed by former permanent secretary, federal ministry of finance, Mr Ochi Achinivu.
The first Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA) was enacted in 1953 and since then, there had been many amendments, but there have never been any comprehensive efforts to get a completely new set of laws for the Nigerian Customs Service.
Apart from failure to enact a new law, government has however over the years, inaugurated committees and task forces to either review or restructure the service; the latest being the one headed by former permanent secretary, federal ministry of finance, Mr Ochi Achinivu.
We recall that while inaugurating the committee last year, the mimster of finance had observed that: “The Customs that we need is not one that not only does its job professionally, but also lives up to its billing as the prime agency at the nation’s ports, by actively seeking solutions to the challenges that port users face and advising government proactively on them. “We can’t afford to keep losing trade and revenue to neighbouring countries as we currently do.”
“The Customs has been rated low in the area of trade facilitation. It has been blamed for obstructing free flow of trade into and out of Nigeria. There is definitely room for improvement and there are still some officers and men that give the service a bad name”.
With this, the minister gave the Achinivu group the matching orders to turn the Nigeria Customs Service around and the committee has since its inception be working as if it were another superintending agency over the Nigeria Customs Service.
Before the Achinivu committee, there had been attempts to restructure the Customs. There was the Esther Nenadi Usman committee which led to the emergence of Jacob Gyang Buba as the Comptroller General of Customs; taking over from Alhaji Ahmed Mustapha who also at one time a member of a panel to restructure the same service.
The Task Force which is an all Customs affair was actually headed by Dr Bello Mohammed who was the sixth chief executive of the same Nigeria Customs Service; serving between 1988 and 1994.
Although the task force had two years within which they were expected to have put the Service back on the track in the quest to modernize reform, reorganise and refocus it, it was roundly condemned as a having failed in this mandate.
This probably led to the creation of Achinivu panel which drew it membership from across stakeholders; including a retired senior Customs officer, a frontline licensed customs agent and a maritime lawyer; among others.
It is this committee that is reportedly spearheading the current moves to reenact the Customs and Excise Management Act. The committee is currently engaged in collating inputs from stakeholders and it is after that exercise that the document will be taken to the Finance ministry which created the committee and from there the draft may surface at the National Assembly for considerations as the new CEMA.
The present CEMA has been roundly condemned as being archaic and incapable of meeting the demands of today’s’ Customs. A Customs Act must engender trade facilitation, mordernisation of operations efficient cargo clearance procedure. None of the present crop of Customs officers can lay claim to actually knowing the present CEMA as it was enacted when majority of them were either not born or were school children.
Good enough we hear that the proposed law seeks to outlaw the use of non-customs apparatuses for cargo inspection; in fact it sees to cancel both pre-shipment and destination inspection of Nigeria’s imports.
However, one area of conflict which must be tackled by those who are crafting the Act those who will eventually debate it is the existing Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) Act.
The new CEMA should be drafted with CRFFN Act in mind so as to remove the conflict of freight forwarding and licensed customs clearing; a development which has been prominent since the CRFFN Act came into effect in 2007.
We strongly advise that CEMA and CRFFF should play complimentary roles and not antagonize each other. It is worrisome that the document which is being worked on does not take cognizance of the existence of CRFFN and we think that it is in view of this that the CRFFN itself has gagged its member-associations from commenting on the draft.
The CRRFN registrar is reported to have said that :“Nobody is permitted to comment on it, we don’t want any association to say anything about it, we are bringing everything under control, we don’t want a situation where this association will say something and another association will say another thing. The Council will call all of them together and we will decide on what our position will be as freight forwarders”.
As much as a new CEMA is desirable and long overdue, its success or otherwise will depend on its being realistic about the existence and importance of the CRFFN Act; which is also an Act of the Nigerian National Assembly enacted to promote integrity and best practices in freight forwarding; an integral part of which licensed customs agency is.
Discussion about this post