The deafening calls from the Nigerian business community in the maritime sector for the urgent probe and prosecution of Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) the recently sacked Customs Comptroller General are fuelled by the foul odours oozing from the contents of his dirty files while he superintended the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) as its boss
MODERNISATION DECEIT
It has been alleged that Col. Hameed Ali (retd) alongside an officer of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) who rode roughshod on the Service’s Trade and Tariff (T&T) Department and was forced to retire late 2022 (names withheld) have personal business interest in the alleged deceit commonly referred to as Customs Modernisation Project (CMP), Tentacle’s investigations reveal. The said officer who held the T&T Department by the jugular had refused to retire at the end of her service year in 2022 citing a three years approval allegedly granted by the Customs Board in cahoots with Ali, to stay on as a serving officer. Her alleged desire to spend another three years in office after her due retirement date, facts scooped by this medium revealed, was not unconnected with her desire, also, to see to the fruition and consummation of the customs modernisation project in which she allegedly has a personal business interest.
Thus, Ali himself was in a hurry to endorse the officer’s alleged application for a “three-year service extension”. But for the pressure and outcry against the alleged extension both from within and outside the Service, the former Customs T&T Department empress was forced to bow out of the service after allegedly putting the Valuation Unit in disarray. It was gathered that for the same modernization project Ali had lobbied allegedly to remain in office as the customs boss after former President Muhammadu Buhari government expired.
The Nigeria Customs Modernization Project’s concession agreement was signed between the NCS management and Huawei Technologies Limited in Abuja on Monday, May 30, 2022. At the time, Ali had regaled the nation with the theory that the full automation of the activities of the NCS by the Chinese Huawei would create more jobs in the NCS and earn higher revenues for the country up to the tune of $176 billion in 20 years. However, behind the facade, Ali had an alleged ulterior motive, according to inside sources, to concession the revenue collection job for the NCS to a firm he allegedly has interest in. Ali, in a suspicious move, failed to disclose to the Nigerian public how Huawei would be remunerated.
On Wednesday, June 1, 2023, Ali had horribly inaugurated a near-empty building at a location in Abuja and tagged it the “flag of the Trade Modernisation Project Office”. Based on this medium’s reliable investigation, aside a few computers sighted in the building, the rest of the modernization project office remains an artifact to hoodwink the public that the Customs Modernization Project has taken off. Experts in such projects have, however, explained that the Ali-hurriedly packaged Trade Modernization Project Office does not have the basic facilities and other infrastructures to support Ali’s claim of full automation of customs operations at the sea ports, land borders and airports. These experts have also called on the president Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s government to terminate what they now refer to as “Customs Modernisation Concession Deceit” which they alleged remains a project where Ali and his co-travellers have huge investment to the detriment of the security of the entire nation. For this reason, they argued Ali should be investigated and prosecuted.
For example, a maritime business expert, Eugene Nweke, a former President of the National Association Of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), warned that the “Pre-Arrival Assessment Report (PAAR) being currently deployed by Customs in the cargo clearing process remains the beginning of customs modernization project. He insisted that “There is nowhere in the world where a country has concessioned its customs revenue collection duty”.
THE TRANSIRE FRAUD
The Transire cargo clearing procedure in customs parlance is a bond-backed fast-track clearing process which aim is to achieve faster and more efficient clearance of cargoes from the ports. Under a Transire, a bond owner with customs is allowed to take delivery of his containers to a bonded warehouse for examination and release. Under Ali’s administration the Transire operation was alleged to have been badly run and abused, fuelling the suspicion that the abuse of Transire may be responsible for the influx of illicit drugs and arms and ammunition into the country unchecked.
According to a clearing agent who identified himself simply as Samuel, Transire simply means a bond with customs that covers for an importer to carry his containers to owners’ warehouse for examination and delivery in order to decongest the port. But Sam regrets that in no other administration of the NCS had the Transire deal been manipulated, corrupted and massively abused as it was done under Ali’s CGC. Sam alleged that in the past eight years Ali reigned in customs, the Transire business was reduced to what he tagged “open and close”. According to him, containers on Transire were hardly examined to ascertain their real contents, rather with the connivance of few customs officers the containers’ seals would only be broken at the warehouse without proper physical examination. He also alleged that some of the times, many Transire containers never entered the bonded warehouses where they were destined to for examination. Rather they would get to the gate of the warehouse where their seals would be opened and they would reverse, and zoom off to their final destinations. Sam said that he could mention some of the bonded warehouses where such practices allegedly occurred under Ali.
In this way, Sam alleged, duty payments were manipulated and evaded, worse still, nobody could tell the real contents of the containers aside what their owners had on paper. He alleged that most smuggled tomatoes paste and groundnut oil came in through Transire deals. Sam also alleged that the issuance of Debit Notes (DN) on Transire containers ceased under Ali due to the latter’s lackadaisical approach to customs operations. Thus within the past eight years, billions of naira that would have accrued to the Federal Government were lost to individuals who operated the Transire deal.
In his advice to President Tinubu, Sam insisted that if the country must be freed from illicit drugs and the proliferation of arms and ammunition, and win the war against insecurity that is ravaging the country, it is either the Transire business is thoroughly supervised by specially trained security officers or it should be terminated because it has encouraged indiscriminate smuggling and corruption in the past eight years Ali bossed the customs.
Sam further called on the Federal Government to investigate all private bonded warehouses in the country where the Transire racket took place in the past eight years and also invite Ali to explain why Transire was corrupted under his regime.
A retired customs officer who is now engaged in the business of freight forwarding confirmed the abuse of Transire procedure under the sacked CGC Ali. Craving anonymity, he said that the Transire clearing process requires that there will be working scanners that can scan containers as they are being dropped from the ship so that their contents can be known before they are taken to the bonded warehouses. The clearing agent said scanners are not working in Nigeria, while those working are not put to optimum capacity utilisation. Hence, he said, the abuse of Transire under the prevailing circumstance cannot be avoided. He feared that the implications can jeopardise the security of the country.
FRAUDULENT AUCTIONING OF SEIZURES AND OVERTIME CARGOES
Credible Customs sources have revealed that there was alleged fraud in the auctioning of customs seizures and overtime cargoes in the past eight years under the Ali regime, and therefore called on the Federal Government to investigate the fraud and unveil who carried out the auction and the method of auction as well as what accrued to the Federal Government as revenue in the process.
This magazine gathered that that at the inception of his regime Ali had initiated an online auction portal for seized and overtime cargoes, but was to terminate it when he perceived that the posh cars and other highly priced items were not going to be an exclusive preserve of certain section of the country. It is instructive to note the Ali leadership of customs witnessed, just as with the Buhari government, a high level of tribalizing, ethnicizing and regionalizing customs operations in a brazen manner.
In Ali’s eight years of leadership, it is alleged that customs across the country recorded seizures of millions of bags of rice, millions of jerry cans of vegetable oil and fuel, bales of second hand clothes and shoes and assorted kinds of motor vehicles. These seizures also ran into estimated trillions of naira in value according to customs sources. It was gathered that the rice and vegetable oil were all frittered away, allegedly, through the Ministry of Humanitarian Affairs raising questions as to what the ministry did with the quantum of seizures. A source in defence of Ali who talked to Tentacle pleading not to be named in print, insisted the rice and vegetable oil were used in the school feeding project of the Buhari government, COVID-19 palliative, as well as the feeding of internally displaced citizens.
As for the highly valued Sports Utility Vehicles (SUVs) and other posh cars and valuables, investigation by Tentacle established that Ali had created an office at the Customs headquarters in Abuja through which he gave out these vehicles to his cronies and associates. In this manner he robbed the masses of participating in the auctioning of seized items and overtime cargoes.
Investigation revealed that Ali gave a certain car mart identified as Garku Motors, a firm allegedly owned by a Bauchi State indigene, 54 Prado Jeeps in one fell swoop at an alleged auction price of One Million Naira each. Such nepotistic act trailed Ali’s auction of overtime cargoes and seized items throughout his sojourn in customs service.
APPROVED THREE YEARS EXTENSION FOR 15 RETIRING MANAGEMENT OFFICERS
Last year, Ali had allegedly approved a three-year extension of service for 15 retiring Deputy Controllers General and Assistant Comptroller General (DCGs and ACGs) who had completed their years of service on the flimsy excuse that the young officers recruited from 2009 were inexperienced to take over the affairs of the NCS.
Tentacle gathered that at the forefront of the questionable extension was DCG Isa Talatu, a confidant of Ali who headed the Trade and Tariff (T&T) Department. These powerful forces, it was gathered, had reasoned that if Buhari would keep Ali, a retired Army Colonel as the Service’s CGC for near eight years at the time, it was possible that then president Buhari would not question their extension of service if the Customs Board approved their proposal.
Investigations revealed that at customs retirement session in 2020 at Abuja for retiring officers, the idea to allow DCGs and ACGs nearing their retirement age secure an extension of three service years was mooted to the administration of Ali by those that would benefit. Some retired officers who confirmed the idea of extension said although they were opposed to it as there was no law backing the extension, Ali had given his tacit consent to the consternation of many who attended the meeting. Fast forward to 2022, Ali had allegedly presented the three years extension proposal to the Service’s Board for approval, but for public outcry, those 15 senior officers would still remain in the service till date.
ILLICIT DRUGS IMPORTATION
Smuggling in all kinds of illicit drugs got to its crescendo in the past eight years according to available records, particularly tramadol, Colorado and cannabis sativa commonly referred to as Indian hemp. The National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) suddenly became the most celebrated security agency in Nigeria under the Buhari government, busting syndicates and cartels of illicit drug traffickers. These imported illicit drugs wrecking havoc among Nigerian youths and fuelling insecurity, entered the country under Ali’s watch. Credible sources alleged that Ali was compromised as Customs CG, as he was in the habit of ordering from Abuja the release of high-duty containers and other suspicious containers he had personal interest in. Thus, he developed weekend nerves in interrogating the causes and sources of influx of illicit drugs into the country.
Fresh in stakeholders’ memory is the 2018 alleged 29 containers of tramadol imported into the country via the Onne Port in Rivers State under the watch of an identified Area Controller in charge of the Onne Customs Command who was alleged to have penchant for releasing illicit drugs to a cartel operating in that port. At the time, it was alleged that 9 of the 29 containers were apprehended by the Onne Customs Command while the rest 20 containers were released to the importers. The Onne Port tramadol scandal was to attract the ire of the Senate Committee on Customs in 2019 when Senator Ade Fadahunsi led the committee members to Onne Port terminals insisting that suspicious containers must be thoroughly examined to arrest illicit drugs. Millions of dollars were alleged to have been paid to the officers who turned a blind eye and allowed the release of the 29 containers.
To prove Ali’s alleged culpability in the heinous crime against the Nigerian state, the Customs Area Controller who allegedly masterminded the release of the illicit tramadol, was given a pat on the back by Ali when he lifted him from Onne Port Customs Command and made the Comptroller the Area Controller of the Apapa Premier Port Command. Many analysts became fooled as to how Ali would sweep such tramadol smuggling syndicates under the carpet. The nemesis of that action was to haunt Ali when his man Friday CAC allegedly continued the tramadol release racket in Apapa Area 1 Port.
When Ali could not contain the Apapa tramadol racket scandal, he was forced to redeploy the said CAC to the Customs Headquarters, Abuja and then to the Border Drill Operation. While Ali was expecting unalloyed loyalty from the officer who also got promoted to ACG, the officer began to lobby to dislodge Ali and become the next CGC. The officer secretly got himself decorated with a national honour by Buhari without Ali’s knowledge or consent. In retaliation, Ali allegedly set him up with 120 bags of rice in Katsina State which orchestrated the ACGs compulsory retirement from the service.
Many analysts have alleged that the release of illicit drugs is still going on at some ports with the connivance of Customs Intelligence Unit (CIU). These analysts want Tinubu government to probe into the alleged release of illicit drugs from the ports by Ali’s men. They alleged that Ali almost legalised the import of illicit drugs into the country through his actions and inactions.
Efforts to reach Abdulahi Maiwada, the customs National Public Relations Officer (NPRO) for his comments on these issues were not fruitful as his phone line could not connect due to bad network issues as at the time of filing this report.
