The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) have showcased seized 25 container loads of illicit drugs valued at over N9.2 billion.
Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, at the weekend handed over the seizures to official of the National Agency for Foods and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), at Apapa Port, Lagos.
The Customs boss who expressed displeasure at the development has said the Service is set to review the licenses of bonded terminals operating across the country.
He said the decision follows trade infractions spotted across three bonded terminals operating in Lagos recently.
According to him, the review of licenses will entrench standardization across the Service’s operations in line with global customs procedures, while strengthening compliance with extant trade laws.
He said his administration was fully compliant with the recommendation of the Word Customs Organisation (WCO) which “has emphasized the adoption of Post Clearance Audit (PCA) in it’s imports trade administration.
He disclosed that through the adoption of PCA, some non compliant Bonded terminal operators had already been spotted with over N500 million revenue recovered from them on account of sundry infractions.
While pointing out that most of the current Bonded Terminals’ Licenses were over a decade old, Adewale said the proposed upward review will expose unserious operators as well as forestall the spread of illicit and substandard goods across the nation.
‘Customs headquarters is in the process of reviewing the processes of licenses. Such decisions have been taken because we have seen and observed that quite a number of these bonded terminals are openly violating our laws, and as a responsive government agency, we cannot allow this to continue.
‘Every license that is granted has some conditions that have to be met, apart from the bond and the fees of the license’.
He said that the Service will also review the bonded terminal licensing fees upward, stating that the current fees do not reflect the country’s current economic realities.
‘We are not only reviewing the license base to ensure that it is an inclusive process, but we will review the fees to reflect our current situation.
‘The license fees that are operational now have been in place for over a decade and are no longer in tune with current realities.
‘In conjunction with bonded terminal operators, we have to sit down and review all of these, such that whoever has the license to operate the bonded terminal, and even the customs license, will be those who are deserving of it’, the CG Said.
The seizures of pharmaceuticals which were officially handed over to the Mr. Ayobami Ibrahim, Director (Ports) of NAFDAC included unregistered pharmaceutical products and codeine based preparation which he said, ‘pose imminent danger to public health’.
