- Senate Accuses Customs, NPA of Aiding Revenue Loss
The Senate has accused the Nigeria Customs Service and the Nigerian Ports Authority of negligence, leading to the country losing revenue to corrupt practices at the ports.
The Chairman, Senate Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff, Senator Hope Uzodinma, while raising a motion at plenary on Thursday, called on the upper legislative chamber to investigate ports regulators in the country.
He recalled that the Senate had on November 16, 2016, debated a motion on the urgent need to examine the operations of the Customs revenue drive and the committee was mandated to carry out “a holistic investigation into the activities of the service, with a view to identifying the leakages and irregularities in the import and export circle, and the causes of the declining revenue profile of the service, and come up with a recommendations.”
He added that the committee discovered that over N30tn worth of foreign exchange in form of approved Form ‘M’ made for imports and for which there was no evidence that the goods came into the country had been racketed between 2006 and 2017.
Uzodinma said, “Rather, what the commercial banks do is to apply for foreign exchange and the Central Bank of Nigeria approves it and the money is transferred to foreign banks; but there are no documents that the goods come in. There has been round-tripping with the limited foreign exchange that we have in Nigeria.
“The recent one, which is mind-blowing, is that shipping companies now load cargoes worth billions of naira, come into the country, go to warehouse terminals and offload, but the Nigerian government will not collect one kobo. All they do are informal negotiations with the terminal operators and regulators, and they will offload.
“This is an international crime. We have identified over 228 vessels with their destination numbers and terminals where they offloaded. We went through the Customs’ ASCUDA database, tracking every shipment and every vessel that came and offloaded.”
He added, “Also, there is this act by the Asian companies moving all their goods to Cotonou in Benin Republic. And these goods are meant for the Nigerian market. By midnight, the vessels will change their documents as if the shipment is from Ivory Coast or even Cotonou, and they will move in. We are losing trillions of naira annually as a result of these infractions. There is incorrect classification, undervaluation, under-declaration and incorrect origin.
“The Customs service is a very technical service and the Nigerian Ports Authority is complacent. There is no control anywhere. As a matter of fact, the entire import and export circle is on rampage. And the money we are losing is even more than what we get from crude oil. And the government is not doing anything.”
The lawmaker prayed that the Senate Committee on Marine Transport be mandated to join the Committee on Customs, Excise and Tariff in the investigation “to enable us to deal with some of the agencies under its control.”
