By: Podo Sunday
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| Smugglers arrested and rice ceased by Nigeria Customs Service Corps |
The cardinal duties of Customs, universally, are to facilitate legal trading at various entry points and prevent goods on the prohibitive lists from gaining access into the country. For these and other reasons, departments like Assessment, Valuation, Revenue, Enforcement, etc. Are key to the success of Customs anywhere in the world.
Smuggling as an illegal trade is very popular and injurious to even a thriving economy, which is why the Mexican-American border is one of the tightest land borders in the world in spite the huge shocks to the American economy. No country jokes with its borders except in Nigeria, where our borders are porous and security checks are largely compromised by randy officers and men.
Despite that, Nigeria is a signatory to the African Trade Liberalisation Treaty, which allows for the free passage of "made in Africa" goods across the borders. Nigeria is also a member of the trade charter with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), where trade liberalisation and facilitation are entrenched, but those charters and treaties suffered setbacks when insurgencies and other transborder criminalities took over North East and North Central Nigeria beginning in 2014 with attendant kidnappings and bombings that were traceable to the proliferation of arms and ammunition and maceranies and local collaborators in the country through the land borders, according to intelligence gathering. A tragic development difficult to deal with and which ultimately consumed the government of former president Dr. Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in 2015.
At the height of the threat to national security, the erstwhile president, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari's government, shut down all land borders in the country in 2018, bringing to a halt all legitimate transborder businesses. Four key borders, two up North and two in the Southern parts of Ikot—Ekpene Calabar and Seme Badagry Lagos were partially reopened on December 15, 2020, to pave the way for some essential import and export goods that were not prohibited.
The President, Sen. Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, upon assumption, had appointed Mr. Adewale Bashir Adeniyi, MFR, as Acting Comptroller General of Customs (CGC) of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), ending almost eight years of Col. Hameed Alli (Retd) as Customs boss. Within two weeks of Mr. 'Wale Adeniyi's appointment as Acting CGC, the Nigeria Customs Service is yet to brief critical stakeholders like manufacturers, importers and exporters, licenced clearing agents, and journalists on the harmonised details of operations at the border. Perhaps the new helmsman, Mr. Wale Adeniyi, is also waiting for a presidential directive on its operations at the land borders.
However, before the borders were put under lock and key in 2018, the borders were duty-paying land ports for general goods, including fairly used cars, and I could remember that the Seme Border ETLS and Vehicle Seats were the busiest offices at the border.
Incidentally, when the borders were shut down in 2018, imported commodities like rice, poultry foods, used tyres, used clothes (Okrika), Tokunbo vehicles, and processed drugs were the most widely smuggled items across the borders across the country.
The former president, Gen. Muhammadu Buhari's 20-kilometre embargo on fuel stations, also increased the spate of fuel smuggling, which continues unchecked even after the removal of fuel subsidies by the present administration on May 29, 2023.
The FG under Gen. Muhammadu Buhari cited national insecurity and the protection of local manufacturers and farmers as the reasons behind border closures, but strangely, smuggling reached feverish levels across the borders during the same period under review with the tacit connivance of security agents, even though there was some collaboration between the Customs and other security agencies, including the Army, to help in enforcement operations. Such units were code-named Joint Border Drill (JBPT). They recorded some successes until they were disbanded recently.
It is also disheartening to note here that it is not only the Nigeria Customs that is faced with the menace of smuggling, and just as the numbers of youth going into relapse and rehabilitation through drug abuse have increased, there has been an equally increased number of interceptions of processed drugs by smugglers at the borders by operatives of the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA).
The war against smuggling and smugglers should be total. The biggest and most popular punishment for smugglers is the forfeiture of their goods or vehicles, as only a few are prosecuted and not convicted. In fact, the NDLEA is doing better than the Nigeria Customs Service in the areas of prosecutions and convictions of offenders, and the Customs Legal Department should come alive to its functions or relinquish such powers to the IGP of Police.
These measures and options become necessary so as to safeguard our internal security and local production lines, including farming, and make Nigeria safer, more productive, and more prosperous.
It is also expedient for the new Ag. CGC to work with all the Service Chiefs, including the Defence, Army, Naval, and Air Force, and The IGP to set up an elite squad to operate as checks and balances across the nation's airports, sea ports, and land borders, as this will further increase Customs revenue and tackle not just rice and fuel smuggling but also gunrunning across the borders.
The Government of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu should equally prioritise the development of all land border communities by creating Free Trade Zones for legitimate transborder commerce to grow the informal sectors and resuscitate the Land Borders Commission just like the NDDC to take care of the high numbers of unemployed youth in those areas as a way of discouraging smuggling and other transborder vices.God bless The Federal Republic of Nigeria.