Those who have followed the wave of clampdown on car dealers by men of the Nigeria Customs service in the last few weeks are bound to wonder if the nation isn’t under the siege of an undeclared emergency. I do not here refer to the routine seizures of cargoes of contrabands either at border posts or warehouses usually announced with fanfare on radio and television; rather, I refer to the macabre drama of going after car dealers and motorists on the highways and business premises all in the bid to collect unpaid duties on cars.
Those of us who grew up in the late 60s will most probably remember the ubiquitous tax man at whose approach, able bodied tax defaulters scaled fences for the fear of being hauled before the officials for restitution; or fearsome local council officials perched on the highways supposedly collecting radio or advertisement taxes. Now, if we had thought that the country was permanently done with crude tactics of chasing tax suspected defaulters on highways and street corners, the ongoing onslaught by the men of the Nigerian Customs shows how deeply ingrained the psychology is.
That is the context in which to see the ongoing rampage by men of the Nigerian customs under the leadership of the no-nonsense Col. Hameed Ali (rtd). For a country that continues to experience the shrinking of its civic space– no thanks to the general insecurity in the country – the resort to locking up of business premises and invasion of hotel premises all in the guise of chasing car owners believed to have evaded duty payment can only further take the country down the pole.
The Punch reported an eyewitness account by one Imo Ugochinyere, said to be national spokesman of the Coalition of United Political Parties in Abuja thus: “Customs men have invaded Fraser Suite Abuja and sealed it, blocking diplomats and guests from coming in or going out…The affected guests include some soldiers who are lodging in the place….They are harassing guests and ordering hotel workers to wake guests up from sleep to identify their cars….’
In the end, a total of 11 vehicles mainly of the Toyota, Lexus and Mercedes Benz brands were carted away.
Interestingly, the Customs boss has since provided an interesting perspective to the saga. He told newsmen at a forum last week that 90 per cent of cars in Nigeria were smuggled into the country by unscrupulous elements. He specifically singled out vehicles on display in auto shops across the country just as he said that the raids on car dealers’ spots were to ascertain whether the vehicles were brought in genuinely or not. The country, he said, needs revenue for development, hence, it became necessary to collect duties on those smuggled vehicles.
Said he: “We want to use this opportunity to ensure that cars within our borders are fully customised, which means duties are paid on them.”
“We are looking for revenue from everywhere and we have these people who brought in vehicles and failed to pay duties.
“What we are doing now, we are just enforcing the law, which allows us to collect revenue on behalf of Nigeria and also ensure those vehicles you and I will go and buy have genuine papers that are roadworthy.”
The truth is that the customs boss is only beating a well-trodden path. In fact, the approach is neither novel nor could be remotely described as smart. In the end, the treasury might be several billions of naira richer at least for a while; of course, the question of whether that crude, antediluvian extortionate method – a method itself so fraught with corruption – is the best that the men of the customs can come up with in this day and age would perhaps remain a part of our intriguing national question!
To say that we have been on this route before is merely stating the obvious. Under President Olusegun Obasanjo, the method was deployed until Obasanjo asked the Customs to back off following complaints by Nigerians. I recall the former president saying that an institution that could not muster the capacity to collect appropriate customs duties at the designated point had no business rolling tanks into town for the same purpose. In President Buhari’s first term, the customs also attempted to resurrect the obnoxious tactic only to run into another brick wall. Again, I recall that the Bukola Saraki-led National Assembly in the course of the altercation between the customs and the in the 8th National Assembly actually went as far as attempting to change that particularly aspect of the law which most Nigerians had found increasingly offensive. Unfortunately, rather than the customs getting back to the drawing board to address the issue in a fundamental sense, the institution’s leadership has again resorted to bandying an old law which seeks essentially to the reward failure of its establishment in the age of technology.
So what will the latest activism achieve? Is it simply about more revenue into the coffers of government (and perhaps men of the customs)? When will the customs learn to do things the way the rest of the civilised world do? What will it take for the customs to shake off the jack-boot mentality in favour of a technology-driven enforcement?
Imagine the customs supremo admitting that 90 per cent of cars in Nigeria were smuggled; in other words, for every 10 cars imported into the country, nine is smuggled. That being the case, it is either that the customs which he leads is either irredeemably corrupt and hence qualifies to be disbanded, or, that the law which he operates is so fatally flawed to have any redeeming feature.
Is it any wonder that the world is laughing at us? For the sake of all that is sane and decent, President Buhari should order Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) to get his men back to the border posts. As for the National Assembly, it should proceed forthwith to amend the relevant laws permitting such open-ended raids. Remember, this is 2019!
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