Unassuming, meticulously thorough, Customs former national Spokesman, Deputy Comptroller Wale Adeniyi believes thousands of metric tons of rice have been stashed in several warehouses in neighbouring States, waiting to be smuggled into Nigeria. But, he also posits in a chat with the MARITIME FIRST, shortly before he was redeployed to Apapa Customs Command, that the Customs Service is, technically speaking, more prepared today to meet such challenges.

Excerpt please:-

There are stories that unscrupulous elements are using our borders, particularly the land borders to fuel smuggling and other criminal activities. What  is the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) doing to contain this, if the story has any semblance of truth?
You cannot choose your neighbours.  If you as an individual can choose your neighbors, you will probably choose somebody else, rather than me.

What countries all over the world do is to manage whatever neighbours they have to mutual beneficial advantage. A good example is Israel. Perhaps, you may take a good look at that country and the countries that are near it.

Israel has some countries that do not even want to recognize that the State exists.  So, over the years, what it has done, is to take measures for them to manage where they are, because you cannot take States away from where they are and relocate them elsewhere.

So, let’s assume we have some neighbours who live off us, off our sweat and they benefit a lot by being close to us… What do we do? We manage them. In any case, what we have been asking for in return, is for them to also recognize the fact that we also needed to benefit from them.

It has not been easy to manage our border particularly in the western flank, like Benin-republic. For a long time, goods destined for Nigeria has been landing in Benin-Republic, Nigeria is not a landlocked country. We have seaports, we have access to the port and things can be imported directly, but unfortunately, some Nigerians still choose to use ports of our neighbouring countries.

Now we have discovered that a good number of people are not doing it for trade participation purposes, they are doing it because they want to contravene one law or the other, either the law of prohibition, or law of restriction; all because they don’t want to pay the correct duty.

What has been our major response to that challenge?
We have put all our structures on ground.
You would recall I talked about the compliance team earlier that is doing a very wonderful job; we are talking of the team that has recorded over 300 seizures in the first three months of their operations; but we discovered that we cannot do it alone.
And so, We have also discovered that we need to engage  with other agencies of government to ensure that we have a very safe border.

The other agencies of government involved are the army, the police, the SSS etc; we have to collaborate with them, particularly the NAFDAC.

We collaborate more especially in the area of intelligence. We also know we need to collaborate with even communities, local communities particularly those within the boarders. We know we need to bring them on board because smugglers use them; and smugglers use their territories; smugglers feed on the intelligence that they give to them, to know where customs patrols are situated; to know our working hours, to know our relatives, our strength and weakness.

Such challenges we have, they pass information to them and they exploit this situation to enable the smugglers’ activities to be successful.

So, in addition to these collaborations, we also recognize on Nigeria side, that it will be more effective when we extend the frontiers of collaboration across the border; and who are we talking with first? It is the Customs of Benin-Republic!

The President is having regular consultation with the President of Benin-Republic; but we are taking it beyond that. We ensure to talk directly to their Customs and we are having series of meetings with them.

We had a number of agreements, and the last time we went to Benin, we actually told them that: ‘look, we don’t need new agreement; all we need to do is to ensure the previous agreements that we had are implemented; and that is what we are doing now.

We are putting structures; we are putting machineries in place to implement the couple of agreements we have had.

I have talked about vehicles for example: vehicles that landed in Benin-Republic, but which are meant for Nigeria would be now escorted by Benin Customs and handed over to the Nigeria Customs Service; and that has begun to happen.

The agreements are multilayer; we are talking about assistance between our Customs and them; we are talking about sharing intelligence, we are talking about giving them provisions. So, it is an effective way to ensure that they know that these are what we don’t want in Nigeria and the need for them to assist in making our country safe. Expectedly, these are beginning to bear fruits.
We believe that if we attack the problems you talk about right from inside Benin-Republic, we will achieve greater results.

And, this is what the World Customs Organisation (WCO) is encouraging… It is all about partnership between two Customs service administrations, and this is the kind we have with the Benin-Republic, to address some common concern.

The excellent way you have spoken is trying to give the impression that there may currently be no problem at all, between the two countries’ Customs at the borders. Is that true?
The only thing that is creating issues for us is the issues of rice. We do know that smugglers have big warehouses of rice in Benin-Republic and we have made it very clear to the political class and to their Customs that those rice would not come to Nigeria; and those who are taking their gambles to smuggle them are busy preparing their waterloo, increasingly, every day.

It is a mutual thing, we are not just going to tell them to ask for concession,  we are also giving away concessions to them. There are goods that we prohibited for export in Nigeria and we are taking a second look at them, we can actually allow these things in Nigeria if they want to.

So when you are in an agreement with someone you give certain concessions; , you give away certain things, you also take certain things too.

We are also giving them vehicles for patrol, you know all those thing that they will use to escort vehicles to Nigeria . In the first year when we gave them these, we even gave them money to maintain the vehicles, so it’s not just ‘give and give’, it is ‘give and take’; and that was sometimes ago…

  But, we understand that our Customs also allow in some classes of goods freely from our neighbouring States..
Those ones are those that has to do with their production within the sub-region under the category that falls within ECOWAS  Trade Liberalization Scheme (ETLS). But this is restricted to those that are trading within the sub-region. The intention of this is to encourage trade amongst ourselves.

The rice we are talking about is not produced in Benin-Republic; the funny thing is that we also know that they don’t consume per-boil in Benin-Republic, we know that all the per-boil rice that have landed in Benin-Republic are ultimately destined for Nigeria.

They don’t produce vehicles, they don’t produce frozen chicken. So, these frozen chickens we are talking about, are those that are imported from other countries, not ECOWAS countries and are landed in Benin-Republic.  So, it means they are only using Benin-Republic as a kind of landing post, before they bring them in to Nigeria.

In other words, there must be something that those importing them there are running away from.  Otherwise, they should be able to bring these items directly to Apapa ports, Warri ports, or to any Nigerian Ports, pay the duty and take it away and utilize.

So, in response to your question, we have given exception under ETLS, even reflecting it in our prohibition list, we gave exception to Benin-Republic.  It’s like saying : if you produce any item on our prohibition list, tell us, we will remove it for you and we allow such to come in and we may even setup an office there. So, that way, you don’t just bring tyres to Seme and say this tyre was…from Benin-Republic.

So, the idea is, if we setup an office there to  monitor it; we  will then register such producers, alongside their products ; and once we have a notice that you want to come and sell such in Nigeria, invite us,.  It would enable us see your production line, production cycle.

It’s like, ‘let’s see the production line, let see the raw material that you use. If you are bringing five trailer loads of tyres to our borders for instance and we have not seen evidence to show that you have had raw materials for two trailer loads, then something is wrong somewhere!

So, we had to maintain an office there to superintendent and look after those manufactured products. We have seen them do some textiles, some local textiles and we have brought them to Nigeria.

So those that are traded within the sub-region must be those that are produced within the sub-regions and there is a proviso that even if such goods are on our import prohibition list, you can bring them in.

But, you can’t bring them in from Canada, from US, from Germany, from China, or from India.

But, if we see evidence that they are produced locally and there is at least 35 percent local inputs into it, of course we will fulfil the rule of origin and they can be brought into Nigeria and it is duty free.
The task is onerous. So, perhaps, we should ask you to enlighten us in respect of some of your tools, for manning the borders.
We have a good aerial surveillance of the borders.
We have helicopters, we have patrol jets. We have two new helicopters, so we actually have three that we can deploy. But for the ones that we use before, they are fitted with cameras. The cameras are attached to them. But, these new ones don’t have cameras yet, so we cannot use them, as surveillance aircraft. So, for it to be configured into surveillance, we needed to attach surveillance cameras; and we are already working with the relevant agency of government that has offered to assist us in reconfiguring it, appropriately. So, instead of spending more money on  consultants, we are working with other sister agency of Government.
So, to answer your question, the Nigeria Customs Service today is, technically speaking, absolutely effective!

TO BE CONTINUED…