Should the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Strike Force be at the ports? No, say licensed freight forwarders. But the Strike Force’s coordinator, Deputy Comptroller of Customs Abdullahi Dahiru Kirawa, disagrees, saying his team’s presence at the ports should not worry clean importers and clearing agents. In this chat with reporters in Lagos, he says his team is committed to trade facilitation, prevention of smuggling and revenue recovery. MUYIWA LUCAS was there.
What is the Strike Force about and what are your duties?
The Strike Force Team is formed by the management of the Nigeria Customs Service headed by the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) as a team that will be the third layer of defence in terms of Customs operation after the Area Command and the Federal Operations Unit respectively. It is charged with the responsibility of ensuring that there is compliance with laid down rules, regulations and ensure extant procedures are properly followed in all Customs operations and that the primary objective and mandate of the Service in terms of revenue generation and the facilitation of legitimate trade. This is in addition to ensuring that the suppression of smuggling to the barest minimum is achieved. The role of the Strike Force Team with that of the Federal Operations Unit is complementary to that of the Area Commands. We are to synergise, collaborate and cooperate to achieve the goals set by government for the Service. One of the key functions of the service is revenue generation and facilitation of legitimate trade. That said, the strike force team is there to ensure compliance to rules. Therefore, the strike force team as a body is to ensure that this thing is done or enforced to the letter and to ensure that encumbrances in terms of checkpoints within the hinterland and other things that will prevent the smooth movement of goods and services is not misconstrued by any Area Command within the hinterland and even within the border area. That means we are to enforce and ensure facilitation of legitimate trade.
Some licensed customs agents and importers are worried over your operation at the ports as part of the Customs team physically examining cargoes. Don’t you think you have become the problem rather than the solution?
Only those that have skeletons in their cupboards have reasons to fear. The strike force team is to ensure that all those that are compliant with the stated rules in our statutes books have no itch at all in their operations. The team has been and will continue to make our processes faster and easier for persons and companies that make sincere declarations and pay correct customs duties to government. Those who make insincere declarations with intentions to cut corners and short-change government by not paying correct amount of duty, will have us to contend with.
Last year, the Strike Force made a seizure of duty paid value of about N17b and collection of duty of over N1b. Can we have an overview of what you achieved between January and last month on duty collection?
We have gone further than that. Within the first four months of this year, January to April, we have collected close to a billion naira as revenue that could have been lost. I tell you confidently that from January till date we have realised N788,338,072 from Demand Notice (DN) issued in Zone A alone. When I say Zone A, I mean the South West area only. We have made several hundreds of seizures from various commands that include containers from various ports and also contraband goods across the border areas.
How do you detect infractions; is it via intelligence or you are connected to the system?
Certainly the strike force team operations are mainly intelligence and technology driven. We do not operate in isolation. We operate with due diligence and cooperation within the various units of the service, more especially the Customs Intelligence Unit (CIU) that provide us with credible intelligence that leads to some of the seizures we have been able to make. Furthermore, the effort of the Commanders and various officers and men of the strike force team go a long way in sourcing information from credible sources from various individuals and good Samaritans that we have been able to use this intelligence to achieve our results and the results are there for everybody to see. Therefore, I will want to enjoin the members of the public and our fellow colleagues that are privileged to having certain credible information to avail us with them so that together, collectively we will achieve the goal set for us by the Service. It is a collective responsibility not only for the strike force team, but for anybody that is concerned or related with Customs operations like the stakeholders, clearing agents, importers and exporters; all those that are connected with maritime business are always welcome. Our doors are opened so that together we will save this country in terms of security and safeguarding the economy through suppression of smuggling and ensuring that there is compliance with laid down rules and policies of government so that it will be better for everybody.
From your assessment do you think the Eastern Ports are more compliant than the Western Ports because it appears more that most of the infractions are from the Western Ports?
It might not be so, remember there are more ports in the Western part of the country than the Eastern part. With the volume of trade in the western ports therefore, one should expect more of these activities from this section of the ports zone, than the eastern zone because there are more activities going on here than there.
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