Sir, there have been seizure of expired, fake pharmaceuticals at the port, what prompt the massive seizure?

I have always emphasized that we will never sacrifice the health and security of Nigerians and everyone living in our country on the altar of trade facilitation. I am pleased to state that our officers are living up to expectations by executing our mandate to the fullest. While our commitment to facilitating legitimate trade remains unwavering, we are equally dedicated to ensuring that any import consignment or export cargo transiting through our ports under Customs control is thoroughly checked using our non-intrusive (scanning) measures and physical examinations where necessary.

There are some few arrests concerning this importation, some of the containers have been here for sometime and the owners didn’t show up, but the most important thing for us is that we are not allowing questionable, expired and illicit drugs to get to the hands of Nigerians and that’s what I mean by saying we are running them out of business because they must have invested a lot of money into this.

What happened to the Containers after customs’ seizure?

Traditionally, we hand the containers over to the relevant agency that has regulatory oversight over them. For instance, illicit drugs will be handed over to National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) while seized expired pharmaceuticals will be handed over to National Agency for Food Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for destructions. The destruction of the illicit and expired drugs is carried out by these agencies.

With the Zero import duty waiver on some food items including rice. Are the land borders opened for rice Importation into the country?

There is nothing in this fiscal measure that says rice will be brought in through the land borders, nothing has changed in the Importation of rice aside from the fact that brown rice and rice paddies will be allowed duty free, that’s the only amendment to the fiscal policies.

The extant policies on rice still remain the same and importation through the land borders still restricted and since it’s already removed from items to access forex, anyone who have the money and the forex who want to import it can still bring it in but periodically, we still have rice imported in the port, some in smaller packages because it’s not under import prohibition list.

 Don’t you think that the implementation of zero duty on imported food items will make it difficult for Customs to meet its revenue target?

Every year, the federal government in response to certain situations found it necessary to bring up some kind of interventions and this intervention under reference has to do with measures to address food security in the country in the long run and ending hunger in the short run.

What this mean is that there should be sacrifice that should be done by different agencies of government and of course by Nigerians too who have been asked to tighten up their belt in the last few months. We have these measures to alleviates our conditions so, the FG through the Nigeria Customs Service will also bear some of these responsibilities and make sacrifice.

However, from the data we have in the second quarter of 2023 and first quarter of 2024, import data showed that we spent an average of N1.3 trillion so it’s about N2.6trillion half year for those items alone on food items that are exempted that is the brown rice, wheat and other grains items, so by our estimate, a total of N188billion will be forfeited in terms of customs duty, levy that would have been collected. 

This isn’t too much sacrifice for the government to bear when we compare it to the long-term objectives of putting food on the table of Nigerians.

However, we in the service will have to tighten our belt, look at the processes and procedures and other areas of our operation where we can close some leakages and ensure that this shortfall doesn’t represent a major dent to realizing our targets in 2024.

Recently, you accused terminal and bonded terminal Operators of connivance to undermine the system, could you please speak to this?

What we have seen reinforces some ongoing attempts by some criminal elements using the network of Customs agents, Nigeria Customs officers, terminal operators to undermine our system. We have seen, recently, a growing number of containers that were either not examined in the port before they are released or those that were stemmed down into terminals, they left the ports on transpire, but they never got to those terminals and some of them found their ways into the premises of the importers for whatever nefarious activities or the other.”

This amounts to where our processes and our procedures are deliberately compromised for their selfish interests. We are looking beyond the facts of revenue lost, we are looking at situations like this if these kinds of drugs have found their ways out of the ports and into the hands of criminal elements, the kind of danger it poses to national security.

We have gone very far in identifying those elements within the service and outside the service, and we will not spare any of them. We will not spare the customs officers involved, we will not spare the terminal operators, we will not spare those bonded warehouses that use their facilities as sanctuaries for this kind of illegitimate business.

They are not only Tin Can Island Port. We got intelligence from Tin Can, Apapa, Onne and Port Harcourt ports. The use of off-dock terminals, bonded terminals and facilities like this is to facilitate trade to allow people to carry containers on transit or transfer to those inland container terminals.

We have some of them also outside Lagos also outside Lagos. It is not all about the terminals inside Lagos. We have seen in our intelligence that seems to suggest that there are a lot of discrepancies going on. A lot of abuse of our procedures and this abuse is not possible without the connivance of our officers. So that is why I’m saying perhaps some officers are also involved.

We will do our investigation and we will be glad to announce anyone found culpable and we will apply sanctions in our law 

Recently, you had partnership with China Customs, which other customs administration are you going into partnership with?

In Customs, we believe in partnership and none of our seizure are done without partnership. For instance, recently, I was in the Peoples Republic of China and I had the privileged to meet with the Vice-President of Chinese Customs Administration, the meeting culminated in a MoU and this gives us opportunities to collaborate on exchange of data during investigation and, for instance, if any seizure is linked to the country, we will let them know, give them all information about the shipment and they will give us the Information about the exporter, sales etc. Also, we have another MoU to be signed with the Customs administration of India and that has taken us quite some time.