A group of freight forwarders has described the Nigeria Customs anti-smuggling war as a scam contrived to enrich favoured persons within and outside the service.
The group alleged that operatives of the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) and Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC) Strike Force merely harass and extort money from traders and their agents, and vowed to start a social media campaign against them that will engender their reforms.
Mr. Godfrey Nwosu, Secretary of the Tin Can Island chapter of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) said in Lagos that the two organs of the Nigeria Customs Service have been bleeding the nation’s economy and innocent traders, while enriching a circle of customs personnel and their cohorts.
Describing the FOU and the CGC Strike Force as mere instruments of oppression and extortion, Nwosu compared both bodies to the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS) of the Nigeria Police Force (NPF), saying that as the police SARS has been undergoing reforms as a result of a social media campaign, the same fate will befall the two customs bodies.
According to him, the NAGAFF Tin-Can Chapter intends to spearhead similar campaigns against the two customs entities (#EndFOU, #EndCGCStrikeForce), with the aim of “instigating reforms to curb the high-handedness and exploitative tendencies of the operatives.”
He said that the recourse to #EndFOU, #EndCGCStrikeForce campaigns will help check the frequent losses of lives from gunshots at scenes of FOU checkpoints, during market raids, during high speed chases of suspected smugglers, and gunfights between both groups.
“We can’t continue to record avoidable deaths, all because splinter FOUs mount checkpoints and raid markets to intercept consignments and extort money from traders or their agents for goods that were duly cleared and released from the seaports, airports or land border stations.
“We are crying bitterly about the agonies that traders, particularly importers, and their agents are regularly subjected to along the highways by multiple FOU units, intercepting cargoes and seizing these and taking them away to their operational headquarters where the cargo owner or the representative is unable to meet the terms of their extortion. At the headquarters, the extortion rates are so much higher and you end up paying out so much if you are desirous of retrieving your goods that were impounded not because of any legitimate infraction, but simply to intimidate and extort you.”
Nwosu accused the FOUs and the CGC Strike Force of regularly organizing press conferences to announce and display alleged smuggled goods purportedly seized by “eagle-eyed and gallant officers from economic saboteurs”. He alleged that these events are often stage-managed, as the same goods are recycled to hoodwink members of the public gullible enough to believe them.
The freight forwarder further alleged: “One seizure they would flash it on the media, on the news more than three times. Strike Force will come and tell you ‘this rice, this okrika was caught’. Tomorrow, FOU will come and splash the same seizures as its achievement in this system!”
He urged the Customs Comptroller-General, Colonel Hameed Ibrahim Ali (rtd), and his management team to harmonize the operations and manage the human resources of the Service effectively through a more strategic deployment of its personnel. He suggested that Customs management could deploy the FOU to be part of the cargo clearing and delivery system at the ports, if it does not trust in the capacity of resident officers at the land border posts, seaports or airports to execute their briefs in the system, instead of allowing the FOU operatives to haunt the highways and engage in extortion and impounding of cargoes on transit to warehouses or markets.