By Isaac Anumihe
As the Comptroller General of Customs, Colonel Hameed Ali (retd), battles to wriggle out of the conflagration that engulfed him following his policy on payment of duty on imported vehicles, the House of Representatives are now waiting in the wings to further bring him to final ridicule.
Ali had on March 3, 2015, given vehicle owners one month grace between March 13 and April 12 to pay duty on their cars or have them confiscated by the service.
This however did not go down well with members of the National Assembly who may believe are the greatest culprits of duty evasion. Expectedly, they told the CG to reverse the policy in the interest of the general public. The following day, the CG, through his Public Relations Officer, Mr. Joseph Attah, told the Senate that the policy was irreversible. To even worsen the matter, the NCS was said to have ballet proof Range Rover said to have paid confiscated the Senate President’s N298 million car.
According to a report, the seized bulletproof Range Rover Sport Utility Vehicle (SUV) is owned by the Senate President, Dr. Bukola Saraki.
The report noted that Nigeria Customs officers in Lagos had on January 11, 2017, intercepted and impounded a Range Rover SUV, which carried documents with its chassis number as “SALGV3TF3EA190243” and was to attract a Customs duty of N74 million from its N298 million value.
But when asked to show evidence of duty payment and an end-user certificate from the office of the National Security Adviser – a document required for bulletproof vehicles – the driver presented documents that were found to be fake. The reportedly fake documents provided by the driver indicated that a miserly Customs duty of N8 million was paid on the car.
Customs officials said that, apart from the fact the Customs duty was extremely low, they also determined that the presented document itself was fake. They consequently impounded the vehicle.
“Later the same day, January 17, 2017, the Senate sent a letter signed by one O. A. Ojo, acting as the Secretary of Procurement, Estate and Works of the National Assembly, requesting the release of the vehicle, which he claimed belonged to the convoy of the ‘Senate’.
In its response, the Nigeria Customs sent a letter dated January 24, 2017, again requesting for the end-user certificate as well as evidence of proper clearance before the vehicle could be released. But so far, neither Saraki nor the National Assembly had provided the required documents,” the report said.
However, Daily Sun investigation confirmed that the car is in the custody of the Customs warehouse in Ojodu, Berger. When Daily Sun contacted the Acting Public Relations Officer of the service, Joseph Attah, he said he had sent a copy of the report to the appropriate command and was awaiting a feedback. But subsequent calls to him were rebuffed. However sources from the National Assembly noted that the CG’s action was seen as a big slap on the face of the National Assembly and a pound of flesh was required to balance the terror equation.
To further demonstrate its over sight function over the customs, the Senate ordered the CG to not only reverse the policy, but to also begin to wear his uniform as the CG. Ali was quoted as saying that he was not appointed by the President to wear uniform. What was important, he said, was whether he was doing his duty or not, insisting that he was empowered to seize any smuggled item anywhere he finds one.
“If we suspect that smuggled items are brought into your own house, we have the rights to condone that house, and go in and search,” Ali hit back at the senators. But as if the House of Representatives members were watching with anger since what applies to one applies to all, the House on Thursday, last week, ordered to the probe Ali over his refusal to auction seized items amounting to over N1 trillion. The House argued that the money would have been used to shore up the revenue of the government and ameliorate the sufferings of the masses.
Ali, a retired colonel in the Nigerian army and a cousin to President Muhammadu Buhari, was appointed in August 2015 with a clear mandate to reform, restructure, reorganise and cleanse the system, which was then enmeshed in putrid waters of corruption.
His first assignment was to stop the auctioning of seized items, including vehicles, food items and fabrics, to the extent that one year after his tenure, over 40,000 bags of rice worth over N80 billion were rotting away in various Customs warehouses all over the country. In view of this, the President in December, last year, ordered that the seized food items be distributed to internally displeased persons camps across the country.
Deputy Comptroller General, Mr. Umar Ilya, said the bags of rice were shared among Internally Displaced Persons’ (IDPs) camps. The distribution was done in the presence of the Acting Director General of National Agency for Food, Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), Mrs. Yetunde Oni.
“We have seized over 40,000 bags of rice since the ban on importation of rice through the border. Those are rice shared to the IDP camps after we tested and certified them suitable for consumption,” the controller said.
But while the seized rice had been distributed, as customs claimed vehicles with Duty Paid Value (DPV) of over N6 billion are still rotting away in various Customs warehouses and premises across the country.
The vehicles numbering over 2,000 units, most of which were seized by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) as part of its anti-smuggling drive, have started depreciating in value. Some of the vehicles were impounded along some inter-state highways when their owners could not produce proofs of Customs duty payment. Some including cars, buses, trucks and tankers were intercepted during attempts to smuggle them into Nigeria.
Spokesman for NCS, Attah, said in a telephone interview that the auctions were suspended by Ali to fine-tune it for transparency.
‘’The CG suspended it to give room for transparency so that the new system will be without bias or favouritism. The new system is planned in such a way that people will be able to apply for auction online and the highest bidder gets it. But that the delay to auction is temporary and will be addressed soon,’’ he said.
The seized vehicles, many of which have gone through a process of court condemnation and awaiting auction, are at the border stations and various arms of the Federal Operations Units in Lagos, Owerri, Benin, Bauchi, Kaduna and Kano.
It is however, believed that the lawmakers who are the biggest beneficiaries of the auctioned vehicles have always seen Ali’s policies as a direct affront and have been looking for any misstep by the CG to act back at him.
But Ali on the other hand believes that he was doing the bidding of the President and he has the President’s support. Unfortunately for him, the President has denied him in the midst of trouble. Even the press and his colleagues left him to fight his fight alone. Like an orphan, the CG is stewing in his own mess and two options are now left for him – to wear his uniform as CG or to throw in the towel. But there are strong indications that Ali is likely to choose the former option because of the lucre he has started enjoying from his position. These scenarios provided a fertile ground for the House of Representatives to adopt a motion to investigate Ali for his failure to auction confiscated goods.
While the Senate is taking its pound of flesh, the House is moving a motion against the embattled CG with a view to totally bring him to submission. The decision was taken following the adoption of a motion sponsored by a member from Abia, Prestige Ossy, on the need to investigate the failure of Ali to auction confiscated goods. He said that instead of auctioning the seized items worth billions of naira, the NCS left them to degrade. The lawmaker said it was worrisome that since the ban took effect in 2015, it had resulted to the proliferation of seized goods at various formations of the NCS.
“Most of these goods, especially the vehicles with DPV worth over N6 billion, are rapidly depreciating. The Customs service will eventually spend huge amount of money in disposing them when it ought to have generated huge revenue for the government by auctioning them before they wither away. The failure to auction goods in its custody had denied the Federal Government over N1 trillion, which ought to accrue to it from the auctioning of those goods,’’ he said.
Following the adoption of the motion, the House passed it to its Committee on Customs and Excise to investigate and report back in eight weeks.
Meanwhile Nigerians are of the opinion that the CG should auction the vehicles to generate funds for the economy. However, the process should be transparent to differ from the old process, which was riddled with corruption.
Chairman, Association of Nigeria Customs Licensed Agents (ANLCA), Seme chapter, Birisiyu Lasis Fanu, is of the view that the Customs should auction the vehicles to generate revenue.
“The condition they gave was that those whose vehicles have not been condemned by courts should go to their various offices, give them the necessary information of their vehicles and pay the bills.
But those that have been condemned should be auctioned so that the government can get some money. If they are auctioned, there is nothing wrong with it. They normally auction them and I don’t think they have halted the auctioning except the ones they have not taken to court to condemn. They auction only when the courts have condemned them. The legal officer of the command will prepare a document for that and send to the court to condemn. It is then the Customs has right to auction. That is what those ones they have not sold are waiting for,” he said.
But the National Co-ordinator, Save Nigeria Freight Forwarders, Chief Osita Patrick Chukwu, said that in auctioning the cars, Customs should avoid the old order of allocating the cars to their cronies. Rather, they should create auction points where everybody can participate in the process.
“They are taking their time to do auction now unlike before when they give it free. They are taking their time now. What I want Customs to do is to build auction points where every Nigerian can partake in the auction. That is the type of auction we want.
“Let them have auction points. If they do that, the government will make more money. The previous administrations used to auction them to particular people and they buy them, sell and go back for another allocation. The problem of this man is that he is following the usual process. The CG said that he will not auction anybody’s property if the owners are ready to claim them. So, I advise Customs to build auction points like what obtains in UK and US. Electronically, you can bid and buy from any location,” he noted.
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