The image maker and National spokesman of the Nigeria Customs Service, Wale Adeniyi needs no introduction to either the maritime critical stakeholders or core operators in the banking sector.
In a chat at the weekend, fielding questions from customs revenue generation, relationship with other sister organizations to aerial surveillance of smugglers, he concludes that the Service has positively altered the balance of terror, between its anti-smuggling operatives and dare devil smugglers.
Excerpt please:
There has been some allegation of under usage of your aircrafts, especially in the sense that they were not always on ground to offer adequate logistic supports and intelligence to field officers as required. Is this true?
We have a lot of seizures that have been made as a result of surveillance and intelligence that was aerially taken thereof. So, I won’t agree with you.
So, we might not be able to fly as much as we want to fly, but we must understand the fact that our first concern is to always ensure that our air craft are absolutely in good condition and air- worthy before we take into the air. And this you must also appreciate is capital intensive.
So, I agree we might not be on the air for as long as you may want, but then, we have been able to maximize the opportunities that we have; to generate intelligence and such intelligence are timely sent to our land based field officers.
The arrowhead of Nigerian Customs Brokers, Prince Olayiwola Shittu has praised your increasing capacity for revenue generation, noting that nobody could have anticipated such feat, five years ago; yet the target you set yourself, you were unable to attain. We learnt Government gave you a target of almost N1billion but you added N200 billion to it. We learnt you met Government target, but fell short of your own. What would you say was responsible?
I wouldn’t see anything wrong with anyone showing higher aspiration for yourself. Its like when you get into the university and your parents tells you, ‘we would be satisfied if you come back with a Second class upper; but then, you task yourself, ‘why not first class?’ let me aspire towards first class! That was what happened to us. A target was given to us, but we felt that we could so N2billion additional, on top of the N1bn that was given to us. That was the aspiration.
However, as to your question, a number of things happened during the year: fiscal policies changed; the exchange rate for instance—there was a free drop in the last quarter of the year; and it affected the level of importation.
In absolute terms, we did not meet our target, but in comparative terms, we did, far better than we did in 2013; we also did better than in each of the corresponding months in 2013.
So, it all depends on which of the parameters you have used.
But then, we have also said that at this period of our national economic history, when there is this glut in the oil market, and the price of oil is coming down, it is about time, we begun to re-adjust the prism through which we judge our performance.
We must begin to now look beyond generation of revenue, because the takeover of Destination inspection by Customs has opened our eyes to a number of other equally important performance indicators that we can use to assess how good we are doing.
For example, if we begin to see PAAR (Pre-Arrival Assessment Report) as a trade facilitation tool, then we can begin to ask questions like: how long does it take to generate this PAAR? How many PAAR do you generate in a given period of time? How long does it take a form in to be processed to become PAAR? How long does it take an SGD (Single Goods Declaration form) for it to be cleared? How user friendly is the PAAR how impactful is information that we make available to the public? How helpful is it to facilitate trade? What was the turn-around period for vessels in Nigeria before and now? Have we begun to narrow the time that vessels used in discharging goods now, compared to before? Since these were the things that were causing congestions in the ports, in the past.
I think the answer to these questions would give us parameters that are more sustaining—over a period of time, than just the absolute figure of the revenue!
Of course, the revenue is important; any Customs administration in the world knows that one of its major responsibilities would still always be to generate as much revenues as possible. But then, these revenues are tied to so many other indicators. I just mentioned the price of oil that is going down.
If we are now looking at oil, can we also look at the issue of containers in terms of declarations that the SON (Standard Organization of Nigeria) as it is going to affect the level of importation? In order words, we are now looking beyond oil.
Shall we also look at indicators like how many tonnes of containers the Customs was able to facilitate. Is it easier now to export goods out of Nigeria; because this is what is going to earn us foreign exchange—and the more we earn foreign exchange, the more we will reduce the pressure on the Naira; and thus help us to increase the value of the Naira. So it’s a circle.
Now that the country is facing economic crisis as a result crash in oil prices, what special effort is the Customs adopting, to bail the country out of this mess, by filling the vacuum so far created by the dwindling fortunes in the petroleum sector, especially as the second revenue generation, after oil?
I would, say we are already on course! I believe I already mentioned an aspect of that earlier. For instance, we must recognize that PAAR is basically a trade facilitating tool.
What PAAR is saying is that we don’t just want you to do business; we also want you to do it in a most transparent environment and predictive process—that would guarantee faster rate of turnover. So, if in the days of RAR (Risk Assessment Report) if you were getting N1million from every importer as duty every three months, we are now saying PAAR is capable of doing that faster, so that even if its only N500,000 that we are collecting now, and we can guarantee that we can collect that N500,000 every month, instead of every three months; it means we would be collecting, in terms of turn-over, would be as much as N1.5 million in three months instead of the former N1million every three months.
So, with PAAR, I would say that we have already repositioned ourselves to do that—because it facilitates trade.
Government sent some agencies out so as to ease the goods clearing process. Some like the SON was placed on stand-by, to be invited by the Customs as at when needed. Stakeholders are however lamenting that the SON has come back, way-laying goods already released by Customs from the Ports. Is it fair to importers, that goods already released by the Customs are getting daily way-laid by the SON and you are totally keeping a blind eye?
I am happy you have mentioned partner agencies of Government; because that is the way we look at them.
The WCO (World Customs Organization) recognizes the fact that Customs does alone manage the international trade alone. That there are other stakeholders some of them Governmental, some of them private agencies.
One of the behavioural pillars that the WCO has encouraged in the modern-day Customs is the ability to collaborate with these stakeholders, to create seamless collaboration in the processing of goods.
Now, PAAR also gives us a platform to achieve that seamless collaboration in an electronic manner.
With NAFDAC, we have gone a long way because our systems can now speak with each other; our systems are now linked.
So, they can access our system, and they can use our risk engines to assess the level of risk presented by goods over which NAFDAC has supervision upon
Which we harmonize our risk factors with NAFDAC; and between Customs and NAFDAC, we control almost 80-90 percent of goods that are in-coming. The rest would be either by Plant Quarantine, SON, etc.
By the time we also extend this same collaboration to them, some of these problems would also be a thing of the past. It used to be a very big problem between us and the NAFDAC, but we thank God, that by 2014 we have been able to achieve this seamless collaboration with NAFDAC. So, we will look forward to this same level of collaboration with the SON, etc.
We already have it in mind to work with the Nigerian Agriculture Plant Quarantine services. We also did training with them. We did business analysis of their processes, with these agencies.
So, when we extend similar thins to SON, we believe that some of these problems will be things of the past.
Incidentally, just two weeks ago, the WCO encourage us to recognize those agencies of Government that we work with, because 2015 has been declared by the WCO as the International Year of Coordinated Border Management.
That means that throughout this year, we will be pursuing activities to bridge the gaps between us, so as to help to establish seamless collaboration and border processes as the case may be.
To be continued