By IFEYINWA OBI
INTERVIEW IN BRIEF
The Institute of Planning Nigeria (IPN) is critical about the relegation of planning to the background, which the institute’s  president, Dr McCarthy Ijiebo, says  is responsible for the underdevelopment of Nigeria.

You have exceeded your target and achieved much beyond the expectations of many, what is the secret behind this?

Alhaji-Dikko-Abdulahi, Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service

We have reached the peak of modernisation in Nigeria Customs Service, though it’s a continuous process. Now we are moving into training of stakeholders. When we say stakeholders we mean those custom agents that are working with us. We want to educate them fully the way we educated the custom officers.

You see, that will ensure compliance, because most of the things we do now, the knowledge is just limited to the custom officers alone and actually most times these people make mistakes especially with the day to day interaction on the internet and if these people are not trained properly I believe we will continue to see a lot of lapses. Some of these mistakes are mostly due to their ignorance and some are deliberate.

So actually we really need to train them to get the level of compliance. And again by the year 2020, Nigerian is going to be a great nation and have a boost in economy, and the Nigerian Customs are going to be part of that, we are part of the traffic technical committee in the ministry of finance so we are fully involved. We have to find out from the ministry what exactly should be done to soften the effect of whatever comes up and what should be done to attract investors because, I will tell you and I stand to be corrected, from 2006 till date there has been no government organisation that has a solid data in terms of statistic like the Nigerian Customs, so we are in a better position to advise the government, what exactly that we will relax on so that investors can be attracted, because it is very important, and that is the role we will play.

What are your preparations for the forth coming WCO policy commission?

Interestingly all the agencies have give us 100% support. The EFCC, federal ministry of works, Police, SSS, Road Safety, Military even the Security Adviser, they are all in contact with their offices and as am talking to you honestly the preparation is almost concluded. So we have had maximum support. We are just waiting for the visitors to start coming from the December 2 and they are going to stay with us up to the December 8 when the Mr President will commission the staff college, so we are ready.

What’s your take on the directive by Government that some agencies should leave the port?

Actually I believe that we are all working for the government and I believe that the directive is for the good of all of us. I believe they have complied and understood that it is not because the government doesn’t want to see their faces there but they just want to see how the bottle neck in the clearing procedure will be minimized so that goods can be cleared in a short period of time. They have accepted their fate and it is for good.

The Nigerian Customs have accepted to work together with the tax revenue, how will the service impact it on the freight forwarders?

You know customs collect revenue for the Federal Inland Revenue Service, so they brought in software or a package, so that we can identify those that pay taxes. You see, its a boost for customs, whoever tries to short cut the system we’ll expose the person and that is the only way we can ensure fast tracking on the importer rather than using a clearing agent whoever has contrast with the system.

If one perpetually has a high level of compliance, there is no reason to see the person as a suspect, we will rather push the person on green, you fast-track him to encourage him as a model so that people will emulate him. Actually it is a very good development and we are working on it.

Looking at the project of the 2012 and 2015 on increment in the budget and the area of leakages like waiver, ETLs and what have you, will there be increment in collection?

Yes its going to rise because the current minister said henceforth no waiver is going to be granted except the waiver is going to serve the purpose for the generality of all Nigerians, so with that, we can say we have reduction in the waivers and in ETLS; it is not very much a problem, it is due diligence of the officers to identify what is manufactured in West Africa, because at ETLs everyone knows that there is a lot of fraud, so if the officers actually stepped in 2012 considering the fact of high revenue figure as the target, they watch it. This is actually one of the things we have to do in order to block revenue leakages, so we will work on it. It’s not a problem.

You made over 600 billion in ten months what’s the secret?

It is all about selfless service, dedication to work and humility as well. When I came into office people who have no reason at all tried to bring me down, induced others to do so as well, but be that as it may, I am happy today that I have delivered; I have proved to them and all the Nigerians who have confidence in me that I can deliver. You are talking about revenue alone. Today my officers are 100% motivated. We have gone international. You can never see a custom officer mount road block and all these are the modernization efforts that we have brought in. The staff college will be commissioned in December and many other things. I can not show enough appreciation to Mr. President, Goodluck Jonathan, for his role in all these achievements. I can remember vividly a day he called me and said CG you look stressed, don’t be, take it easy, am strongly behind you. Those words gave me a lot of motivation and encouraged me also. I will say in all, that the president is my mentor and my motivator.

Again when you are putting effort to do what is good and people around tends to appreciate, what you will do is to invariably do more. I think we will continue to do more.

What is the reason for the gigantic collage and your general perception about it?

Well everything bothers on capacity building and if you look at my budget the amount of money I spent in only training of my officers is really I spent in only training of my officers is really very very big. If you look at this structure you find out there is nothing you can be looking for at international level that is not here, so actually it is for building the capacity of my officers, so that they can meet international standard and secondly to cut cost.

Any resource person from any part of the world can stay here conveniently because the facilities put in place here are of international standard, you can see things for yourself, we have E-library that means there’s internet facilities; there are comfortable accommodations. We have gem and also there is a clinic that is well equipped with a residential doctor and it is of international standard. So it is essentially to build the capacity of my officers and cut cost on foreign training.

We want to know if the other agencies can be trained in the collage as well?

In fact, may be the day of the commissioning you will hear from my speech. This institute can be used for retreat for other agencies, it can also used for research because of the quiet and conducive nature of the environment, and more over this attitude has been adopted as an international college for West African and Central African custom administrations. And beyond that am sure that the secretary general will adopt it as African Collage during his visit for the policy commission, and what that means is that any custom administrator from other African countries can come for any research. If you check the computer room, we have computer for French speaking countries and the others for English, to serve the dual purposes.

The minister of finance Dr Ngozi Okonji Iweala will commission it. What this means is that all our printed materials, like duty certificates and others will be done there. We don”t have to give anybody to do it for us. It has security features, fully computerized.

How much did this mighty project gulped?

Honestly I was greatly challenged by the amount of money the contractors were calling to build the college. Some said 30 billion, while others 20 billion and 15 billion, but I want to tell you that this college took 3 billion naira including the furnishing and I did everything myself.

I am the contractor, every Wednesday I come here to work. I used direct labour, my engineers, my electricians, everything. We only have one consulting engineer that comes to supervise. The only thing that is from outside is the furniture which was ordered from a solely Nigerian company, apart from that every other thing is from custom, and I will keep using direct labour to cut cost.