International Customs Day 2022: ANLCA Registered BOT Salutes Nigerian Customs

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Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha

…Urges FG To Scrap Revenue Target Regime

By DAPO OLAWUNI

The registered Board of Trustees (BOT) of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) has felicitated with the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (Retired), his Management, Officers and Men of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on the commemoration of the 2022 International Customs Day which held on Wednesday.

Chairman of the ANLCA Board, Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha in a statement on Wednesday urged the Federal Government to scrap the era of setting annual revenue target for the Nigerian Customs.

Alhaji Taiwo Mustapha, Chairman of ANLCA Registered BOT

According to him, that practice is primitive and a distortion to the Fiscal Mechanism, and a disservice to National Growth.

The ANLCA Board congratulated Col. Ali and the Customs Service for their invaluable contributions to Trade Facilitation, National Economy and Security, even as he wishes the Service the strength to continue to soar and to achieve greater heights in the year 2022.

He however expressed reservations about the revenue target set for the customs service in 2022.
Recall that the government set N4.1Trillion target for the service in 2022.

Speaking on this, Alhaji Mustapha stated that “Some segment of the port industry has expressed reservation about the 2022 Customs Revenue Target. With a sense of humility and duty, l believe we all have a right to be concerned about it’s impact on the survival of businesses; and particularly the maritime sector.

“The BOT is also concerned about our members fate in a regime that believe in successive jack up of revenue to the detriment of trade facilitation; which has been a successive issue, inherited by the current Customs Management.

“We also recognize that this yearly revenue target ritual is a policy directive of the Federal Ministry of Finance (FMOF) handed down to the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).

“We have seen where the NCS has struggled but failed to meet it’s annual target, so in a way, even the Customs itself is a victim of what we are minded to describe as an unfair revenue target, while importers, agents and freight forwarders are the worst for it.

“The ANLCA Registered BOT think that the setting of annual revenue target is primitive and a distortion to the Fiscal Mechanism, and a disservice to National Growth.
We humbly call on the Federal Government to abbrogate Revenue Target System; focus more on Trade Facilitation and promotion of business friendly environment and cease from putting the NCS under pressure of economic strangulation.

“We are dismayed about the constant harassment of the NCS into engaging in improper mode of revenue mobilization. The Federal Government should stop belittling the Service and refrain from pushing the Service Management and personnel into engaging in official rascality just to satisfy the morbid and unethical demand for More Revenue in the light of its negative impact on business growth and sustenance.

“Operatives of the NCS have been made too much victim of unnecessary high handedness through unpopular policy thrusts, and yet, Offficers’ Welfare and Wage remain poor compared to other agencies of government involved in revenue generation.

“It’s about time the government stops this oppressive anti-economic policy which is inimical to the operations of the customs brokers.

“The BOT implores the FG to leverage it’s revenue collection mechanism in all fiscal avenues and stop this oppressive focus on the freight and import industry.

“We believe that with an improved and equitable tax system across all sectors, fiscal and monetary policies with human face, improved maritime security, the oppressive grip on the port economy which indirectly puts Customs in the searchlight will abate.

“We cannot continue to make the NCS the weeping child, and we urge the FG to urgently restructure, reposition and redistribute it’s tax system evenly across all economic and social sectors.
That way, the stranglehold on the Customs as the bad guys in the estimation of the public will loosen substantially.

“It is wrong and unfair to continually put out the NCS and it’s Officers and Men as the tax collectors without morality. The transfer of aggression from Officers to Agents and Importers will have no result but Negativism.

“Let’s rejig the entire tax system and create an acceptable and ethical tax value chain that meets with global and national best practices.
We especially urge the FG that collectively, Nigeria must get her acts right and cease from demonizing our customs service and it’s operatives”

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