The Comptroller General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, has said that the Service is leveraging automation and technology to fish out corrupt officers within the Service.
Speaking during a television interview on AriseTV monitored by Maritime Today Online, Adeniyi acknowledged that the temptation to compromise is inherent when people are entrusted with money, but expressed confidence in the NCS’s strong machinery to counter corruption.
He explained that the NCS’s operations are now largely automated, making it easy to track and monitor activities on the system.
According to Adeniyi, the automation of processes enables the NCS to conduct audits and hold officers and stakeholders accountable for any nefarious activities.
He noted that the Service is already seeing results, with customs officers and stakeholders being caught and punished for compromising the system.
Adeniyi also speaks on the Service’s collaborative efforts with stakeholders to achieve stable foreign exchange rate, measures to combat fuel smuggling, and the recent verification exercise for private jet owners among other issues.
Excerpts:
How did the exchange rate volatility impacted customs revenue and what measures are being taken to achieve stability?
What we experienced in the first quarter of 2024 was a very, very critical situation for Nigerians and Nigerian businesses in general because of the volatility that we had in the exchange rates.
It affected car dealers, definitely. I mean, we had as much as 45% decrease in the volume of cars that were brought into Nigeria at that period. And they were actually not the kind of cars that fetched optimum revenue for the customs. So it’s not only car, even regular imports was affected because people could no longer import raw materials as they want and the volatility did not allow them to plan for tommorow. The rate can be X today and tommorow it is X plus 25 and things like that. So it makes life extremely difficult. But we see some relative degree of stability in the second quarter because there are lots of discussions that are going on, some at the level of the national assembly- the most of them spearheaded by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy bringing on the stakeholders that are involve together to ensure that we achieve stability.
One major challenge to the Nigerian economy is the smuggling of fuel across the border. What measures are been taken to seal the loopholes that facilitate this illegal activity?
When you get open source intelligence, you discover that the prices of fuel in neighboring countries create a lot of incentives for smuggling. In Benin Republic, a litre of fuel is between N1500 and N1600, in Cameroon it is high as N2000 per litre. So when we have this kind of things around our neighbors and we are still doing a litre between N710 and N720 there is already an incentive because the price difference is very wide. So people will want to buy at N750 and put it in some kegs and move to the nearest border and across the borders.
We are tackling this effectively though collaboration. The agency that is involved in this is the NNPC and the Nigerian Downstream Midstream Regulatory Agency. We are collaborating with them to ensure that we monitor in real time the trucking of products from their depots and when we see those that are moving across the border areas, there is a red flag.
How much success have you achieved in that regard?
We launched a special Operation about three weeks ago and I must say that we have heard tremendous successes in arresting them, getting to their cartel , dislodging them and making them run out of business. Just today ( Thursday) somewhere around Badagry, we saw a particular situation where the owner of a filling station constructed a hole in the wall and then crossing the nuzzle from the dispenser right through the hole into some jerry cans behind the scene. We got credible intelligence and we located them. In places like Kebbi, there are tankers that are destined, from the papers that they have to places like Plateau, Kwara and Oyo, but you’ll find them in Kebbi and some of them with fraud papers. In Adamawa it is also the same. I was in Adamawa two week ago and we saw that these products are moving in tankers so we are getting collaboration and understanding of people in border communities that it might be a little difficult for them during this operation but Nigerians stand to benefit if we stamp out smuggling of PMS in the country.
What prompted the need for verification for private jet owners?
We started the verification exercise on Wednesday but recall this was not the first time we did it. We did something close to this in 2019 and the exercise fetched us as much as N2billion within the short time that we did it. We discover that there are more private jets that are operating in Nigeria but has not been brought under the ambit of the law. So the data that we get from NCAA shows that only very few of them paid Customs duty for them to operate in Nigeria. The International Aviation Law Regulation says if they are here for a brief period into the Nigerian air space and go, they are not obliged to pay any duty if they are here on a temporary importation visit but once they are here and used within Nigeria, they are liable to pay duty and so the verification exercise was just for us to confirm those operating within the ambit of the law and those that are operating outside it. Very few of them have showed up for verification and we gather intelligence that a good number of them are actually leaving Nigeria since the announcement was given because they would not want to be verified. It is assumed that when you bring in an aircraft and you register, the next thing will be for you to come to the Nigeria Customs and account for the customs duty if you are going to make use of the aircraft in Nigeria.
We have seen so many of these aircrafts flying and our record tends to show that only few of them have shown up to pay duty and this is why we are binging this verification up.
How is customs effectively providing accurate statistics to support government’s planning and budgeting processes?
Last year was declared by the International Customs Community as the year for data and since then, we have leveraged on that to put our focus on the use of data in our operations. When you get data right, you can plan accurately and predict trends and what is going to happen next in terms of customs operations. Customs seats on a lot of data for imports, exports and transits. Through this data, we could generate a lot of intelligence for government and we are already doing that and it is part of what we are already doing with the PMS data. We were able to launch the operation that I talked about and that is resulting into lots of seizures of smuggled PMS. So we needed to work with government agencies specifically those that have the responsibility of producing these statistics the National Bureau of Statistics ( NBS). We also need to do a lot of capacity building because there is a lot of capacity gap in the area of data analytics.
Give us an assessment of your one year in office. How has it been in terms of performance and even welfare of officers?
I’m happy you mentioned welfare because these are the officers that are drinving the reforms that we are doing. So we are making a lot of efforts to make sure we address welfare issues. For example, we are lucky to have the Chairman of the NCS board who shared this passion for us to improve welfare of our officers. So in terms of renumeration, working conditions, adequate payment of houses when due and even in terms of reviewing the basic salary of officers efforts are in progress and I want to believe that by the third quarter of 2024, we will make some of these known to offcers to serve as motivation for them. But there are other things that are associated with welfare. Promotion for example. Promotion used to be very stagnant. But now, working with the Board of the NCS, we had an understanding that every year, Ist of January, we are releasing promotion of officers that are deserving. We have done it in January 2024 and we are hopung that by January 2025, the next batch of officers will benefit and they would be paid salaries commensurate with their new rank.
Customs is considered one of the most corrupt agencies of government.
What steps is the NCS under your leadership taking to change this perception?
We can’t run away from that fact especially when you entrust some people with some money that sometimes there could be temptations for them to want to compromise but we already have a very strong machinery to counter that- automation. The application of technology in our operations makes it very easy for us to track what anybody has done on the system because virtually all our operations are now aiutomated so it becomes very easy to know what some one did on the system one or two months even one year ago. So they all know we can carry out audit any time and get them and we are actually getting them not just customs officers but also stakeholders who may be compromising our system for their nefarious activity.
Some customs officers have been alleged to be involved in smuggling too. Are you looking into that?
Not just smuggling but any officer that compromises his position will have to be punished there are not two ways about it We have very clear processes for punishment so it is not just talking about it on social media that they did this and that. We have established processes that we have to bring this kind of officers to book.
Have you received any report and what actions have you taken?
Of course we have. What I’m trying to say is that it is not an event, it is a process. It will follow some kind of procedures. We will have to send them off, give them the charges, they defend themselves and we met out apappropriate decisions and these decisions are taken by the Board. The Board of course ratifies before we implement.
What is your revenue projection in the next one year since you have been able to achieve N4.49 trillion in the past one year?
We did N4. 49 trillion in the last one year. The time line we used was my one year in office. Now we have the target for 2024., which stands at N5.1 trillion approximately. We have already gone half way by the end of May. We are optimistic that we would meet this target come December.
