Border Closure Review: Benefits still outweigh losses — Shippers Council

Against the backdrop of the deviation of freight to ports of other West African countries following the closure of Nigeria’s borders, the Nigerian Shippers Council, NSC, has disclosed that a new Border Closure Review review meeting has concluded that the benefit of the closure so far outweighs the losses.

According to Source, some stakeholders in West African traders who hitherto come to Nigeria to buy imported goods and transport the same through the land borders have now started importing directly through their own ports adding that most of them are Nigerian citizens.

They also said Nigerian importers have started shipping their goods directly to the customers in other West African countries through those seaports causing considerable loss of cargo throughput to Nigeria’s ports in favor of other West African ports.

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But speaking with Source on the development, Executive Secretary of the NSC, Hassan Bello, said from the outcome of the policy review meeting involving the private sector, Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, and others, the policy has helped to save the nation’s industries, especially the agro sub-sector of the economy.

He pointed out that the high rate of smuggling as a result of the porous borders placed unfair competition on Nigerian industries since factors of production oversees make goods produced there cheaper.

According to him, “There have been more gains for the country after the closure of the border. We recently held a stakeholders forum where we brought the private sector and the Customs to explain the border closure policy.

In trade facilitation, we need to save our industries, especially agro-based products because of our porous borders.

“For every smuggled item, it means we are not giving fair competition to our producers because the cost of production is cheaper there than in Nigeria.

So this takes our people out of business and we will be faced with growing unemployment. “Although there are some problems that we need to address but there are some which we have a comparative advantage here that we need to source here than in foreign countries.

“The border is porous, we need to tighten it against smuggling and dumping but there will be a time when you will say you are opening your border.

However, technology must be deployed to curb smuggling. “Issues like Cargo Tracking Note, CTN, contactless port/border post; technology will solve a lot of these problems.”

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N1.2billion Cannabis has been intercepted by the Nigeria Customs service

Western Marine Command of the Nigeria Customs Service(NCS) has intercepted drugs suspected to be Cannabis Sativa valued at N1.2billion

According to the State made by Comptroller Olughoyega Petres, Controller of the Command, on Thursday , he disclosed that the seizure was made during a seagoing patrol on Lagos water.

Comptroller Olugboyega described the seizure as the “Largest single seizure” of such drug on the waters in the history of Nigeria Customs.

He explained that his men relied on intelligence and carried out round the clock surveillance for a period of three days before swooping on the target area where the seizure was made.

According to him, the suspected smugglers seen from afar with the drugs dived into water to escape upon sighting customs officers approaching to make the seizure.

“The drugs were suspected to be coming from Ghana and had passed other countries by water before getting to Shashi area of Lagos where it was seized.

“Since no suspect was arrested in connection with the seizure, it will be liable to destruction in collaboration with relevant government agencies like National Drug Law Enforcement Agency and the Nigeria Police,” he said.

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Peters said that the command had achieved 39 seizures within the first four months of the year, which is higher than 12 seizures made within the same period of 2019.

He said that the command made seizures with a total duty paid value of N1,063,427,800 which was higher than DPV of N36,420,481.46 achieved within the same period of last year.

He listed the breakdown of the 2020 seizures made so far as 1,816 bags of rice valued at N38,134,375; 733 cartons of poultry products worth N7,421,625; and 104 bales of second hand clothing worth N4,393,400.

They also include 665 bales of textile materials worth N2,094,400 and 112 kegs of 25 liter petroleum products valued at N112,000.

Other seizures listed are, 25 bales of second hand shoes and belts worth N8,019,000; 25 cartons of chewing gum worth N1,203,000 and the unprecedented seizure of cannabis

The Comptroller attributed the seizure recorded to the renewed spirit of work amongst officers and men of the command to achieve the Comptroller General of Customs strategic plan of zero tolerance to smuggling.

He also attributed it to high level of intelligence gathering and enhanced customs community relations.

Peters said this was in addition to close collaboration with other government agencies like the Nigeria Security and Civil Defense Corps, Nigerian Navy, Nigeria Police, among othersnan.

Customs Report: Smuggled Items worth N17.6bn seized by the customs in Q1

1,553 various smuggled items of Duty Paid Valued at N17.6billion has been seized by the Nigerian Customs Service(NCS) in the first quarter(Q1) of 2020 all over its commands.

According to the statistics obtained by the News  Agency of Nigeria (NAN) from Mr. Joseph Attah, Nigerian Customs’ Public Relations Officer, this was made known.

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465 contraband items worth N2.5billion, duty paid was seized by smugglers in the month of January.

Following the statistics, 679 items of duty paid valued at N14.5 billion, were seized by smugglers in the month of January across all customs commands.

It stated that in March, 429 various seized smuggled items worth N545.8 million were also confiscated by officers and men of the service.

Attah assured that the service would sustain its anti-smuggling operations and support activities at boosting non-oil revenue for national development.