We can start by ensuring that we pick up the mantle of Mr. President’s policy thrust…in conjunction with you, moving with you and fighting with you, we will fight corruption and restore discipline through attitudinal orientation for effective service delivery. “However, I must stress this for emphasis. I will not tolerate indiscipline. I will not tolerate corruption. I have zero tolerance…as an officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, if you are caught involved in corruption, I am not only going to dismiss you, I will make sure I prosecute and jail you. That is basic!” – Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), new comptroller-general of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), said.
The new Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) assumed office last week with star words of discipline, hard work and anti-corruption with the goal of repositioning the NSC. He definitely deserves the support of all in reinventing the Service. We must as a matter of national duty help to reinvent the NCS, with the legitimate hope that the NCS will in turn help in reinventing the Nigerian economy through vibrant, sustainable anti-smuggling campaigns and aggressive revenue generation. There was once a developing value-adding Nigeria. The Nigeria Customs Service together with other public development helped to once build a manufacturing economy with prosperous sub-sectors like textiles, tyre, furniture, automobile etc. In the 60s, 70s and 80s, Nigeria was truly a productive industrialising economy. Excise duties collectable from factory gates of functioning industrial estates in industrial cities of Lagos, Kano, Kaduna, Enugu and Port Harcourt dominated the major sources of Customs revenue. Indeed, Customs Services maintained visible presence in the factories to collect taxes of local value chains. However with the so-called liberalisation of the economy and abandonment of industrialisation agenda; import duties assumed special importance. It was bad enough that we have replaced a productive economy with an importing economy.
It is however, clearly unacceptable that we cannot and indeed we refuse to tax these imports (some of them luxury goods such as armoured cars). Apart from the corrupt activities of some men in service who collude with smugglers, there were also the successive regimes of unacceptable waivers. Col Ali-led Customs must impress on Buhari administration to halt criminal waivers and concessions that in turn put undue pressures on men and women of Customs Service willing to collect duties. Addictive waivers give undue advantage to importers and impoverishes local producers who operate under high cost environment which cannot be passed on to consumers. Today, we run the economy based on wholesale import of finished goods and export of raw materials in the classical version of Lugardian colonial economy. Paradoxically, the Nigeria Customs Services founded in 1891 predated amalgamation. Hundred years after amalgamation of the colonial economy, we must return to the vision of the founding fathers dealing with industrialisation of the economy. With manufacturing and value-adding activities contributing less than 4 percent to the Gross Domestic Products (GDP), Nigeria has long assumed notoriety as a “container economy”. Nigeria increasingly is emerging more as an “imports destination” than an investment destination; everything is imported- from petroleum product to toothpicks, from presidential jet to policy ideas! The bane of the industry is unfair competition from India and China reinforced by smuggling made possible by 152 land smuggling routes (Customs says it is actually 149 routes). We must put an end to the criminal activities of the smugglers just as we have put the insurgents on the run. Many textile mills have closed down with hundreds of thousands jobs lost in an economy with jobless growth. The companies could not compete with relatively cheaper goods from Asia. The Customs must not turn the other way in the face of illegal imports. There is also the problem of under-declared products and non-payment of duties even by legitimate importers. All these denied the domestic producers the necessary competitive advantage and deny the country much needed revenue. As a result of smuggling, imports and dumping the local industry’s market share of the home market is today less than 10percent with 90 percent foreign products. As we consume what we do not produce, we are invariably exporting our jobs, importing unemployment that is now in millions. The industry, which hitherto grew behind high tariff walls and protection, had to contend with intractable problem of smuggling especially through neighbouring countries such as Niger, Benin and Togo. Nigeria is paying heavy “China Price” defined as dumped cheap imports, factory closures and mass job losses. Col. Ali must look at this bigger picture of reindustrialising the country in his commendable bid to refix the Service. The vision of the Service must be expanded to make it part of the national development agenda.
The new Customs Service needs the cooperation of all stakeholders, especially the National Assembly that must amend the Custom Act to address the current challenges of the Service through sustainable financing and motivation of the working men and women in the service.
IssaAremu
