President order on food importation not for border opening to allow smuggling – Customs

The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, has said the Customs Service was still studying the directive by the President on Tuesday on food importation to ease the hunger in the country.

He added that the service generated about N2.7 trillion in the first six months of 2024, an increase of about N200 billion over its projected revenue for the same period.

The service has a revenue target of about N5. 06 trillion for the 2024 financial year

Speaking on Wednesday when the House of Representatives Committee on Customs and Excise visited the headquarters of the service on oversight duty, the Customs boss said while the order by the President is aimed at addressing hunger in the country, it is meant for opening the border for smuggled goods to enter the country

He said, “We are still studying it ourselves. There is nothing in that pronouncement that says the extant rules have changed apart from the suspension of the tariff and taxes. Things that are not allowed through the land border have not been allowed by that pronouncement.

“There is nothing in that pronouncement on that because nothing was said about it. But if there are specific issues or requests that will be made from border areas, we can articulate them as input to the Minister. What was released recently as a product of several months of consultation?

“The objective is for us to address hunger in Nigeria and not to provide a base for smuggling through the land border. So, we have to be very careful in the implementation to ensure we don’t get undesired objective from it.”

Responding to the issue of customs officers raising markets in search of smuggled goods, he said “Let me issue a disclaimer; I did not authorise any Customs Officer to go to any market. We are not supposed to go to any market or operate in the market.

“But the market is not supposed to provide a sanctuary for smuggled goods. If we have information that there are smuggled goods in an area, the law allows us to go there. But because we went to keep the peace, that is why we don’t raid markets, but we also want market people to display some level of responsibility”.