“PTML FRACAS WAS AN EXPOSURE OF COLLABORATORS”…….Prince Olayiwola Shittu
As expected, the first part of this interview elicited divergent reactions; majority commended Prince Olayiwola Shittu for making a success of the assignment given to him by the Association of Nigerian Licensed Agents. Some (especially, the Yorubas) faulted his opinion that there are more License-holding clearing agents than Yorubas. Yet others tasked him on ANLCA unity. In this second part, vintage Prince Shittu fielded more questions; touching on the recent PTML fracas, his association; ANLCA, Cargo Tracking Note and many more.
There were allegations that your committee compromised….
You will always hear that and that is what I always tell people. Since I have been with this association, I have not benefited anything materially or money wise for me to do something, but rather I put my money. We are talking about chapter elections so what am I going to collect from somebody that I don’t have? I conducted elections in the east and there was a young man who worked with me in my office and who used our license to contest and I disqualified him even though I am one of the people who gave him money when he said he had the ambition; I said do you think you can make it; but because I know within my conscience that he is not a director in the company, so I disqualified him.
I am not the one that allowed him, it was what he wanted and I was telling him that “look I am the chairman of ASECO so we will do the right thing”, but he said no oga I will go and try. He was banking on somebody else to talk to me and see whether I can bend the rules, but I don’t bend rules, I can accommodate minor issues which do not have lasting effects, but I will not bend the rules. So if anybody says he gave me money, let him come and say it outside, and one thing I can tell you is that even if you give money to a member of ASECO and at the end of the day, what you paid for did not happen, so what do you do? Because when we were going to the chapters we were telling them not to give anybody money and if after hearing that you still decided to go and influence ASECO members by giving them money and they could not help you, too bad. I want to tell you that there is no part of the process that I did not participate; even the verification of voters, I was there and when I am not around we suspend it, because I know that if I delegate that function people might compromise and give it for me to sign, and that is why I am ready to look at anybody in the face because I don’t and I will never compromise my integrity because I value my name so much and I can tell you that nothing like that happen to my knowledge and if anybody gave money to any member of ASECO, then good luck to him. It’s not that there was no temptation, I was offered money even early in the morning on the day of election; somebody came and said this is N5Million and that even if this man wins, please declare this person but the process was so transparent that the voting and counting are being watched by all the candidates, then how do you go and give one vote to the other, so it doesn’t make any sense. People will want you to do what is not right, but there is nothing like that; to my knowledge.
When are we to expect zonal and national elections?
Zonal and national election will come simultaneously; it is the same day we are electing the president and the national executive committee members that they will elect the zonal coordinators for the western, northern and eastern zones. But, we still have the Abuja elections to conduct, so we have members of ASECO there now doing the leg work and I am sure that before the end of this week I have to go there, if the election does not take place this week, it will take place next week. Once that is concluded, the board will meet and give a time for the national elections to be held.
Now that you have mentioned the board, some of your members are beginning to say that the board is saying too long and getting used to power. What is your take on this?
I don’t think so, I think the situation created itself, because if the people had agreed to conduct themselves properly and allowed the elections to hold, there is no way one can force himself to stay on. The board, like we all know is non- executive, but our constitution says that in the absence of the national executive committee, the board will stay there. If election is not holding because people are fighting themselves, will you blame the board for that, that’s my own opinion, but if there are ulterior motives to also ensure that the elections do not hold, then maybe that is what happened but I cannot confirm it.
Now that elections have been conducted, how united or further factionalised is ANLCA?
ANLCA is more united now than before, because people were allowed to choose their leaders and they are now rallying round those leaders that have been elected. If not, by now, we would have had that some people are aggrieved and have crossed over to other associations, I have not heard anything of that nature and I know that we can still carry ourselves along. One of the good things that we have found out about the conduct of this election is that we know that companies sent out their representatives to go and vote and we discovered that the level and calibre of people that participated as voters are not good enough, so we are recommending that subsequently ASECO will demand that only those on form C30 which is the authority part of each company are the ones yo vote. If the company does not trust you to be on that form C30, then they cannot send you to go and represent them and so that will raise the quality of those that are coming to vote and eventually, you will discover that this idea of giving people N10,000 to go and vote will not be there again.
What was the cause of the recent problem at PTML?
One thing you have to realize is that whether you are a Custom officer or an agent or an SSS, we are all Nigerians and the difference between us is that you have a uniform given to you by the government for you to protect the interest of government, whereas these guys(licensed customs agents) are not regulated, they are free wheelers, all they do is to make sure that their importers go through the process expectedly through the right ways so that the collaboration between the uniform man and the non-uniform man will ensure that government revenue is complete. But, when we both decide that this money going to the government, let us collect our own now, which is the maxim that says “in all the framework of illegality there is no legal basis, but immorality”. When two people decide to steal, the end proceed of that action cannot be judged based on legal matter, it is immorality because doing it at all is illegal. It has come to the stage whereby those who are supposed to help the government in forestalling attempts by non- regulated persons to make money at the expense of government are the same people who are beneficiaries of it. I want to tell you that what has happen now in the industry is that you are only popular and well known when you are carrying money to give uniform persons, meanwhile there are decent people who are agents and custom officers, but they don’t make money; decent people are poor and not popular. So, what happened at PTML is the exposure of the collaboration between two sets of people; the collaboration broke down and they fought themselves.
What kind of collaboration are you talking about?
It has always been there and I will tell you, why it is always there; we all know that a brand new car has tariff for payment of duty, there are some that are 50% while some are 35%. The average Nigerian importer usually doesn’t want to pay correct duty and we have always told them time without number that when you get your assessment as an importer go and pay your money directly, why would an importer choose not to pay his money directly into the bank, because the agent has convinced him that they can actually do it at a lesser cost and the importer will collaborate, they will now go to the officer, duty payable would have been N3million and instead you go and pay N30,000 or N40,000 and shared the remaining money, the man gets his vehicle and goes away. When there is no problem about what I am giving you or what you are collecting from me, nobody will hear the story, so how did this story come out? And it is good that we have heard confirmation of what I said when they (customs) said that they (agents) have been coming like that before and we have been doing it for them. Does a custom officer have the right to compromise his duty? Does the Area Controller have the right to say let this one go and this one should not go, there must be something they have benefited from the one that had to go and made the agents to say no and that’s the beginning of all the crisis; its as simple as that. There is no corrupt agent without a corrupt government official, there is no agent that can effectively conduct or disappear fraudulently and take government money without collaboration, the one who should have the highest penalty is the government official who is put there by the government and who has abused the trust given to him by the government, when it comes to this the blame is shifted and yet they are saying that the officers that are involved have been reported to Abuja, is that the answer? Let me also tell you that the Custom and Excise Management Act has made it very clear that the custom has the power to give you licenses and the power to revoke it, they have the power of prosecution, detention and arrest, if you find an agent engaging in illegality and you catch him and later released him, is it that you are a good Samaritan? You have released him because he has given you your own part so therefore he can go, that’s why we say that we need to change our orientation, the only thing that worries me is that assuming we (licensed customs agents) have a very good leadership, we can prove this case, there is no reason why those agents will be locked up and you say they are miscreants , why should you deal with miscreants, why do the customs service say that you must be on form C30 of a company before we can deal with you which means that you are registered, so why deal with somebody who has no form C30 in the first place? Do you want to tell me that the touts that you see on the roads can just walk into customs office and know where to put document and how to obtain release? It is people that are known to them, if we want to expose ourselves we can go ahead but it will be worse for them. That question was put to me that: is it right for an agent who is supposed to pay N23million duty to bring N300, 000 and I said the person should be in jail because if he had succeeded, he will not come and share it with the association, but the man who must have colluded with him to the extent that the deal fell through is now pointing an accusing finger.
Isn’t all these as a result of the fact that the influence of ANLCA has dwindled over the years?
Let me tell you something, we have a situation in ANLCA now that we are trying to correct with the type of elections that are being conducted, we want to ensure that only those who can take care of the interest of members should be the ones that should be allowed to be voted for by the people themselves. So whoever is a chapter chairman is the person they have really chosen to represent them. One year in the life of an association can cause a lot of damages, which is the reason why some of those chapter chairmen don’t have anybody to fall back on, the board as a whole refused to perform any executive function, we have the chairman of the board and we have a deputy chairman. It is a shame to see customs relying on the Nigerian police to handle agents, and tomorrow when you release a container and it is stopped by the police you will say they don’t have the right because the police must have known that it is this matter of sharing that created the problem, because if you as the CAC accepted that they have done it before and you sympathized with them and let them to go, what right do you have not to allow this one to go if not that something did not work out, then tomorrow you will say that people are interfering in your job and you will want the same agents to defend your integrity.
What is your take on the controversial Container Tracking Note?
It became controversial because NPA made it so, I have always said that if the Federal Executive Council found it necessary to introduce Cargo Tracking Note, it is not our own business, because its the government that always decide how much to pay, the importer himself has been so outdated that when duty on a consignment is supposed to be 5% he ends up paying almost 70% because of government tactics. The issue is: what is CTN? It is a certificate to show that this cargo has been taken note of from point of embankment until point of destination, we in our own company track our importers’ containers at will, so I don’t know what informed NPA to start telling us that the Federal Executive Council has approved it, who wants to know? Is the statement meant to intimidate people? I think that’s what it means, but you need our cooperation and why do you need our cooperation, CTN is a notification that NPA requires for shipping agencies through their shipping lines and through the forwarder abroad about the movement of cargo, nobody is paying in Nigeria, you are not supposed to have an increase in your freight charge but rather its part of the money you have been paying before, NPA should have done that one before through the shipping agencies and their liners and see how they collect their money without dragging everybody into the issue. But there must be something fishy for them to need all the stakeholders to come and agree with them, there must be something they want to achieve by telling us that there is a contractor that is going to collect it and he will collect 40%, that’s not our business it is between them and the Federal Executive Council. But there must be something that they are not telling us; otherwise it should not create the noise it’s creating today.
Are you for or against?
Anything that will make the importer to pay more money, I am against it because already we are down, except they want us to dig a whole and go underground. But if it is an existing levy that some people have been collecting but not to our knowledge, then they are free to collect their money, but they should not get us involved. And if the federal government decides to give somebody 40%, that also tells us (agents) to demand for 40% CIF of goods that we clear.
So CTN does not represent additional cost?
That is what they said, but somehow, the information that I am gathering this morning is that a shipping agency in America has decided to increase its freight charge because of CTN and if others are collecting US$100 for CTN, they are ready to collect US$500.
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