ANLCA BOT Hopeful, Demola Mumuney Bares Mind on Institutionalising Professional Fees of Customs Agents 

—Says ‘My Coming onboard is a Payback to ANLCA’

By DAPO OLAWUNI

In a build-up to the election of the Board of Trustees (BOT) of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA) one of the contestants for the most revered seat is, Mr Ademola Mumuney, a successful customs broker and retired officer of the Nigeria Customs Service who has been operating behind the scenes even though he operates one of the biggest and powerful customs Brokerage firm, Stoirin Maritime Services Limited.

Mumuney, a “Lagos Boy” no doubt, is well connected to the power class in Nigeria, haven served as the immediate past chairman of the Ikoyi Club.
In this exclusive interview with DAILY TREND editor, Dapo Olawuni, he bares his mind and intentions for ANLCA as an association, and how he intends to use his wealth of wisdom and connections to reposition the association for the benefit of all ANLCA members.

According to him, it is important that customs brokers professional fees are institutionalised, either based Cost Insurance and Freight (CIF) or by other drivable calculations and negotiations like it is obtainable in other professions.

We have not heard much about your person before now, can you tell us a little about yourself?

My name Ademola Mumuney, I am the Managing Director of Stoirin Maritime Services Limited, we came into operations in 1994, and we have been into customs clearance, warehousing, collateral management, we also shipping agents, we have been able to husband vessels for some foreign clients.
We are also into surveying, cargo survey and ship survey, these are part of what collateral management entails, working on behalf of banks on cargoes, either wet or dry, vessels or tank farms, we have been into all that for quite some time.
I am a retiree customs officer, I retired from customs in 1996 and I am a pensioner.

Since I left the customs, I have been into cargo clearance, we have been able to do alot with my connection with customs, my interactions with my squad mates, all of them retired like six years ago.
We have had a good relationship with the customs.
Down the line too, I am a member of the Ikoyi Club 1938, I am a past gulf captain then, way back 2009 to 2010, I am the immediate past chairman of the Ikoyi Club, I finished my tenure in 2022. I am a citizen of Lagos.

Are you a politician?

I am not a politician, but I have alot of politicians as friends, even the President works with my wife back then at Mobil, we have such a relationship with quite a number of the politicians.

What inspired you to want to contest for the BOT position in ANLCA?

Personally, I have not really held any position in ANLCA, but I have been of great service to the association at one time or the other.
We all know what the BOT stands for, they are policy makers, and definitely there has to be a good relationship and understanding between the BOT and the National Executive Committee (NECOM).
Fortunately for us, the coming in of the current Customs Comptroller-General, Adewale Adeniyi, since he came, he is very much interested in the activities of the association through the Customs Consultative Council (CCC), they were the ones that sat down to ensure that we had a good election devoid of problems. The election was largely successful and presently, we have a group of people now who are representing us in the NECOM, they are all professionals, they know where they are going, and they are on the same page. I know some of them, like the National President, we have come way back 1990 when I was at Onne Port as a serving customs officer.
For the sustainance of standard in the association, I felt that we need a BOT that would work and be on the same page with them. I felt that I have paid my dues in the industry for 28-years now, and I felt it was time for me to come out and let me payback.
For me, it is a payback thing for ANLCA because this is our profession and we need to ensure that it is sustained, if we don’t have enough people that would made it sustainable, and to be on same page with the NECOM, it would be difficult for that success to continue.
And because we are in a state that we currently are, someone like me decided to come out, so that we don’t go backwards, but propel what we already have to move forward.
This is a profession that we are proud of, and i intend to make sure that this happens, if I don’t do this now, I would feel so bad, I have gotten so much from the association and the profession, if I don’t give back, it is not the best.

ANLCA members are wondering what you are bringing to the table when you eventually win the election as BOT member

Customs agency is an old profession, unfortunately we have not been able to take it to the level that it suppose to be, probably due to the ways things are always handled. When you seat and talk about customs agents, it’s like they are nothing, there has been all negative reputation which is not correct.
This is why we are hoping to take the profession to where it ought to be. Like in the insurance sector where I have a lot of friends, way back 1982, you find a lot of Insurances guys moving around trying to get you life Insurance packages, but today if you look at it, these guys have Board of Trustees that have made the Insurance business a true profession, you can study insurance in the University, become a professional, people reckon with them, they are trusted, these are what professionalism brings on-board.
Today, it would be very difficult for any foreign insurance company to say they want to buy a Nigerian insurance company over insurance activities in the country.

This is my intension for the ANLCA as an association, the chattering aspect, the tertiary institutions, we need to have a working with them. I have spoken with a past President of ANLCA, they had started the chatter for the profession, they stopped at a point, we would take it up from there, and I would ensure that this is done because all it takes is legislative Act, going to the National Assembly, we do have a lot of friends outthere in both Senate and House of Representatives. I was part of the group that went to fight for the Cabotage Act enactment in Abuja alongside Capt Iheanacho and others. We got the Act enacted, although it is not being implemented how it ought to.
So basically, we have a lot of friends at the National Assembly that we can easily get across to in order to ensure the charter is gotten.
Again, we should have this synergy with Institutions whereby they bring about Faculties like they have for Insurance and other courses, there should be Customs Brokerage Faculty whereby you can go and get a degree in the profession. Making it that way makes you much more a professional, the public trusts you because you have graduated from it, people would be able to deal with you professionally, it is not the type we have now whereby agents just come and go, it’s an all comers affair.

The next one is the indigenization of Customs License Agencies, right now we have a lot of foreigners that are being given licences, there should be a way that it would be done and customs would know the performance of activities of the license holders, and restrict it to Nigerians, it happens in Benin Republic and Togo, its basically reserved for their indigenes. But here in Nigeria, a lot of foreigners are quite smart, they won’t show up, but they handle the finance of the company, and these are areas that needs to be looked into, who makes Directors of finance of companies? We have to look into them.

Another issue is Institutionalising the professional fees of clearing agents, we use to do it before when we were working for the oil industry, we tell them we are getting 10percent of their CIF (Cost Insurance and Freight) we negotiate it, these happens in other professions, so I don’t see why it cannot happen in the clearing agency profession.
So these are the step by step negotiation, it enhances our performances and our employment of Nigerians in our companies and in our profession. When you see that that the owners of clearing companies are graduates, it goes a long way, they would have other directors and field boys, these are policies that have to be spearheaded by the BOT, and of course we would also bring in the NECOM, because we need to know their needs, and that is what we would work on, and whatever we want to do, we would have to let the NECOM know so that we would be able to channel the best way of getting to our destination.
All these are part of ideas that I intend bringing onboard, it takes a lot of time, no doubt.

Some of the ideas you have itemised are supposed to be done by CRFFN, clearing agents believed the council has failed, what’s your take?

The CRFFN has been greatly politicised, it is partly governmental, but they have not adhered to the functions they are supposed to perform, they might have started, but down the line they derailed. My take is that, as a member of the BOT of ANLCA, we would strive to ensure that we have meetings with them to see how we can salvage what they have done, and what our own mission is. It is something that has to be done, if we don’t repair the Council, nobody is going to do it for us, so wherever they might have stopped, we would see what we can to encourage them by following up with government, we would have some discussions with them to try and see how to fine-tune the Council, not to just abandon them like that.
I am aware the CRFFN have a lot of problems right now, they cannot pay salaries of staff, there must be something that can be organised for them to succeed. We would help the CRFFN to survive, except if we feel that they are not necessarily, they have their good intentions, and these are things we would check, we would talk to the government if it is necessary for the Council to remain or it should be scrapped, taking into consideration, their successes and challenges.

In terms of Customs operations, what is your impression of this present crops of Customs management?

I would say that the coming in of Wale Adeniyi as the Comptroller-General of Customs was a very positive thing. Like I said earlier, I was a customs officer, Ango a retired solder was brought in as CG, then of recent, Hameed Ali, a retiree Colonel too came in as CG.
However these guys are not customs professionals. In between, some professional customs officers had also come on and served as CG of customs and you could always see the difference.

As for the current CGC, Wale Adeniyi, he has been around for a long time, he is a through breed professional, he knows everything in and out of the profession.
The customs of today are much better than the customs of yesteryear, a lot of them back them do not interact with people, they live far away from the people, but now, all that have changed.
One thing the customs should understand is that, for the public to know much about the service, you have to interact with them. This is what Wale Adeniyi is trying to do now, letting people know what customs is all about, educating the officers and training them, although we still have alot of problems, especially with the young officers, they call themselves GenZs or whatever, I hope the service would get them to be able to work within the confines of the law, customs procedures is laid out, it is not something you change because you feel this is how it should be, a lot of them want to jig things up, you cannot do that unless the Act is amended. I always always tell some of their bosses who are Controllers that, if they leave the service without orientating the young ones, it’s going to be a lot of problems for us.
These are things we are taking up with the customs management, I have had interactions with Wale Adeniyi because I have access to him. And being a member of the BOT, it would be easier for us to let them know that this is how things should be done. We shall do same with shipping companies and terminal operators.
The customs CGC, Wale Adeniyi is talking about ease of doing business, and it is very important that, for that to happen, there has to be a synergy among shipping companies, terminal operators, and the Customs themselves, it happens in other countries, so it must be done here too.

Lastly, the BOT are people seen as ready to spend their money, time and resources for ANLCA, how ready are you to commit to all these?

The BOT membership is a service that you want to give to the association, we are ready to do it.
In as much as we are ready to do it as it should be done, it doesn’t have to be that expensive by travelling here and these, we can always reach out, Internet has made things easy, we have the necessary connections, we can talk to the CG of customs and others necessary to make our job easier. I will spend what I have to, there is no doubt about that, to ensure that things are done the way it ought to be done, it is our responsibility to ensure that we adhere to the tenets of the laws that formed the BOT, if we succeed, the NECOM would succeed.
I am looking forward to a mutual relationship between the NECOM and the BOT, the people on the board must reason along the same page with the NECOM, they must work for the benefit of the NECOM, we are not above the NECOM, we advise them, set up policies while they sometimes implement, not to start fighting the NECOM or to stampede them.
The whole idea is the success of the existence of ANLCA as an association.
In terms of connection, I am from Lagos, when i need something and I know someone that knows someone where i needed help, I go for it. Also, I am on one-on-one relationship with most of the guys up there, having served as a president of Ikoyi Club, the Generals, the Governors, Senators and all, I am ready to commit all my resources for the benefit of the association and that is uppermost in my mind.