The present leadership of the Nigeria Customs Service may be facing its toughest battle since coming into office about five years ago. It’s not that the Dikko Abdulahi Inde has not had issue with its immediate stakeholders, notably, importers and licensed customs agents, but the raging face-off over the introduction of duty benchmark may have elicited more than a passing reaction.
The present leadership of the Nigeria Customs Service may be facing its toughest battle since coming into office about five years ago. It’s not that the Dikko Abdulahi Inde has not had issue with its immediate stakeholders, notably, importers and licensed customs agents, but the raging face-off over the introduction of duty benchmark may have elicited more than a passing reaction.
According to the customs, the idea is to discourage importers and their freight forwarders from engaging in under-declaration or concealment which many importers commit in a bid to evade payment of correct duties.
With the duty benchmark, importers will be compelled to pay uniform duty on certain categories of goods, irrespective of the quantity declared by the respective importer.
To ensure that the idea did not create further tension, the Customs boss was recently in Lagos for a two-legged meeting with licensed customs agents and importers.
At the meeting with the licensed customs agents, the Customs boss appealed that the benchmark policy was largely misunderstood, because according to him, benchmark only concerns the cargo and not its value.
If the customs agents were (for obvious reason of owing their licenses to the Nigeria Customs Service) a bit moderate in their outburst against the benchmark, the large turnout of importers at the town hall and their comments were a confirmation of their disgust with the new customs rule.
At the ‘town hall meeting between the Customs CG and the various importers associations, the customs was accused of wanting to strangulate Nigerian importers through the benchmark on about 16 different items.
After putting up a futile effort to stop it, the importers pleaded with the Customs boss to shift the commencement date to enable them tidy up pending consignments.
Some operational issues have also come up to the fore since the benchmark policy as introduced. One of these is the question that : does it mean that: with the benchmark policy, the Automated System of Customs Data (ASYCUDA ++) which usually profiles the risk level of importers and the Risk Assessment Report (RAR) issued by the Service Providers will be made useless?
As much as one is sympathetic to the plight of the importers, the level of abuses to which import clearing has been subjected it is a great course for concern. The nation’s port system is a haven for sharp practices such as under-declaration, concealment, under-payment and importation of prohibited goods.
Certainly, one can not blame the customs for blocking these loopholes, especially in the face of an unprecedented revenue target.
A lot of stakeholders have attributed the strange policy to Customs desperation to meet the N1Trilion revenue target for 2012. As a government agency, one can understand the need to meet the target, but the Nigeria Customs Service ought to engage the importers and licensed customs agents more, the stakeholders’ meeting and the town hall meeting is tantamount to putting the cart before the horse and taking stakeholders for granted.
A little more consultations are needed to ensure the success and acceptability of the benchmark, but we are opposed to any ad hoc arrangement that will negate subsisting import guidelines.
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