Assistant Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Abubakar is the immediate past Customs Area Controller of Apapa command of Nigeria Customs Service. He was recently promoted to ACG rank and transferred to Customs headquarters in Abuja to be in charge of Board affairs in an acting capacity. In this interview which he granted at the valedictory ceremony held for him at the Apapa command last week, he spoke on challenges encountered while he was CAC Apapa. Bashir said the greatest challenge at Apapa port is non-compliance by the operators. Our correspondent; Dapo Olawuni brings you excerpts from the interaction.
"The greatest problem we are having as a service has to do with the level of sincerity of our stakeholders"
You were once at Onne Port, Abuja Airport, you are now in Lagos going back to Abuja, how do you feel?
You are talking about my heading the FCT command and my subsequent movement to head the Post Clearance Audit in Lagos and at the same time, the Onne Area Command, Port Harcourt Area 2, subsequently to Apapa Area Command and now to join the members of the management on Acting Capacity as ACG. The feelings are straightforward, with the level of experience that one has acquired, invariably as a customs officer; you would always want to excel professionally in all aspects of your endeavor and profession. For me to have worked at the international airport, I have garnered a reasonable degree of experience, and my subsequent other postings have also given me opportunity to have a lot of knowledge. As you are aware, if you head the Post Clearance Audit, it means that you have an octopus kind of hands, meaning that professionally you are everywhere. As a post clearance audit officer, nobody would tell you what to do, you are to check anomalies regarding past jobs that have been done within the last couple of minutes, years and months.
Again, working at the seaport, especially the pioneer and biggest port in the sub Saharan West Africa, you would agree with me that one must have learnt a lot, so my happiness is that I am going to join my senior colleagues at the management level, I would learn from them because they are already better hands over there, and secondly to see how I can add value, no matter how little it is.
Last year, you seized 40 containers of Tramadol drugs at Apapa port which made the Comptroller General to come down to Lagos, how do you feel at the time?
At any time you add value to the life of your fellow countrymen, you must be proud of yourself, but my pride is more to the service, it is an indication that the Nigeria Customs Service is moving ahead, we are moving in terms of the level of compliance and discipline, and of course in terms of level of professionalism. The seizure is not only Tramadol; in the last two months, I have seized 24 containers of tomato pastes. I cannot imagine that with all the tomatoes we grow in Nigeria, somebody will still go to China to import 10 containers of tomatoes, there is nowhere that tomatoes cannot grow, even behind your kitchen where you throw wastes, you would see tomatoes growing there.
Secondly, the vegetable oil we just seized, they are prohibited items, so you can see that the issue of adherence to compliance as enshrined in the extant laws of the country through the Customs and Excise Management Act.
What is the level of revenue from January to March last year and the same period in 2019?
The level of revenue in 2018 is 50-50, we give comparative analysis on quarterly basis because one month can make the difference, you are a living witness of the 2019 general elections in the country, there were quite a lot of apprehension by stakeholders and this has caused the business to go down. But I think that fairly enough, we earned N60 billion in two months, approximately N30 billion per month, though we are expecting, if you go by the 2018 target, N35 billion per month, so if we are able to get N30 billion, we are short of N5 billion, I think we are on 95% performance, so it is good.
What are the loopholes in Apapa command that you would want the new CAC to work upon?
The greatest problem we are having as a service has to do with the level of sincerity of our stakeholders with regards to compliance to extant laws on import and export. A lot of people want to cut corners, while I was at the airport, you see passengers coming in, the law is very clear, if you come with goods that the value is more than N50,000, it is expected as a very good citizen of the country that you on your own declare to the customs, all the customs officer needs to do for you is to make the calculation and ask you not to give him the money, but to go to the bank within the airport and make payment. Come to the seaport, the customs is saying that before you import , before your cargo departs country of origin, you need to have a certified and approved form 'M', but till tomorrow we still have some disgruntled elements that feel that they can do whatever they want to do without filling form 'M '. On this, we are really facing a lot of hardship and unnecessary delay because certainly you cannot take the cargo out, we have our officers tracing some of these containers and giving them a heavy penalty so that it would serve as deterrent, but this deterrent I don't know when it is going to end, because every now and then, something happens and we give a kind of blue channel so that others would see the pointer that there is need to follow the procedure and laid down regulations.
A lot of stakeholders are complaining of activities of FOU, Headquarters and CG Strike Force stopping containers close to the port.
We have a kind of tripartite synergy units, it is part of what the management of Customs decides to do, it is just like what you have in the game of soccer, you have jersey number 7, 9 and number 11, when one player realises that if he kicks the ball it might not get into the net, he passes it to another person. So, sometimes, we allow what people call "play along", we allow cargo to go out so that another intervention that is already in place would do the needful, we do not want to be arresting cargo, detain cargo and there is nobody arrested, we need to track who is the owner and who pays the duty, this is why the management of the service sometimes, in area we find infringement in our officers, they are dully punished, including dismissal and some through reduction of rank.
However, where we feel we need to improve is how we can get the culprits, this is why sometimes we release the cargo, but we are waiting for either of the two intervention forces to do the needful. In some cases, we allow questionable cargoes get to final destination in order to make maximum arrests.
How many arrests have you made so far?
We have so many of them that have been arrested under this command, the tramadol suspects are also there.
What are the challenges you faced while you were in Apapa?
The challenges were enormous, anywhere you are being called a tax collector, you are the most hated because nobody wants to pay the tax or do the right thing. However, my happiness is in two dimensions; first is that I have been elevated, second is that the person taking over from me is an astute officer.
Haven exited the 2,000 export containers that were abandoned at Apapa port, what would you advise Customs management on export procedures?
We as a service, we make sure that we enforce the law, we make sure that we guide you, but in terms of export, we are not part and parcel of inventing any law, the Federal Government can decide through any of its parastatals today and say that exportation of garri (cassava flakes) or yam is free, all we as Customs Service need to do is that when you are exporting that commodity, what the Federal Government has enshrined as the law is made a guiding principle for you to follow and adhere to them.
What I can only do is encourage my colleagues to see how we expedite action on the processing of documentation, as well as the processing of examination of such goods to ensure they are in line with our rules and regulations.
With respect to the 2,000 containers, they had been in the port for a long time, the major reason then was that exporters wanted to export them without documentation, and you would agree with me that if you export anything without documentation, the statistics would not be there, the government would not know the level of export and the proceeds that the government generates through them. My hammer on them then was that you must follow the due process, you must get your form from the bank, you must pass through the process of examination and collection of certificates from relevant government agencies which about 80% of them have done.
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