On Customs’ raid in Kano

Also published in Daily Trust

Considering the phenomenon of indiscriminate smuggling, the sheer volume and the monetary value of smuggled items flooding Nigerian markets, one shouldn’t be surprised at the alarming rates at which the country’s already struggling industries collapse, which discourages entrepreneurship, creates unemployment and consequently unleashes grinding poverty.

The surprising, or rather, the unfortunately ironic aspect of the situation is that, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), which is supposed to prevent and tackle smuggling, has not only failed to deliver but many of its officials are actually involved in facilitating the smuggling of contraband items into the country.

The blatant involvement of the officials of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), of course with the exception of a few honest and patriotic personnel, in facilitating systematic smuggling into the country undermines and will inevitably continue to frustrate the country’s efforts to build a competitive economy. Their occasional intensification of their purported efforts to curb smuggling is a mere ploy designed to further extort the smugglers and in the meantime show off their hypocritical commitment to fight the phenomenon.

By the way, contrary to the assumption that smuggling persists in the country because Nigerian businessmen simply prefer to engage in it, and that Nigerians always prefer foreign goods also, it is actually the failure of the successive governments to provide adequate and efficient infrastructure e.g. stable and sufficient power supply, necessarily needed to create and attain economic competitiveness that practically pushed many Nigerian businessmen into smuggling in the first place. This is because in the absence of such infrastructure, it is practically impossible for locally made goods to compete with imported goods in terms of price and quality, which is also the primary reason why Nigerian consumers prefer the imported goods.

Anyway, the recent raid and seizure of reportedly more than 300 billion naira worth of textile materials by officials of the Nigeria Customs
Service (NCS) in Kano was yet another attempt in that regard. Besides, as expected, they are right now releasing the seized goods to their owners after they agreed to pay some negotiable amounts of money in lieu of the
Customs duties they had evaded. One can therefore imagine the amount of cuwa-cuwa being currently committed in this opaque arrangement.

The age-long collaboration between many corrupt officials of the NCS, who obviously hugely outnumber the honest ones, and some dishonest middlemen who have jointly facilitated smuggling into the country has now grown into an organized and sophisticated crime perpetrated by many NCS officials and some unscrupulous businessmen masquerading as clearing agents.

This situation is particularly scandalous in the northern part of the country where a notorious Katsina-born billionaire has practically monopolised this illegal business for more than a decade within which he built the largest single smuggling business empire in Nigeria and perhaps the west African sub region, if not the whole Africa, for that matter.

He has dominated the smuggling route into the country through its northern boundaries, which is perhaps the most lucrative smuggling route in the country. The route starts all the way from Cotonou seaport in the neighbouring Benin Republic where thousands of shipping containers of contraband items imported by Nigerians from Asia, the Middles East, Europe and America, are unloaded on their way to Nigeria. The containers are then transported by trucks through Niger Republic via Katsina state border towns to their final destinations in Kano and other parts of Nigeria.

What is particularly ironic about this notorious smuggler is his sheer resistance against any attempt to compete with him in this illegal business. He is said to be extremely harsh against whoever dares to engage in this business on this route. In fact, he has reportedly punished many people who have attempted to secretly try their luck in it, by getting all their smuggled goods confiscated by the Customs officials. Tales about his huge influence and the extent of his formidability are very common among top importers and other businessmen who deal in imported items particularly in northern Nigeria.

It is obvious anyway that, considering the sheer magnitude of his illegal business, the brazen way and the blatant impunity with which it is perpetrated on a daily basis for more than a decade, he couldn’t have achieved this without the involvement of many powerful officials within the NCS, the corridors of power in several states and the federal government who he apparently induces with huge financial inducements. This, after all, explains the enormous goodwill he enjoys among the top politicians in the country, the most influential traditional rulers in the region and even among the top religious clerics.

However, since the previous governments failed, or rather, simply refused to tame this notorious smuggler for obvious reasons, the situation is now expected to change under President Muhammadu Buhari who is expected to tame him and his cronies within the NCS, in the context of his anti corruption drive, which he probably prepares to launch soon.