The Senate Committee on Customs and Excise is set to summon the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Col Hameed Ali (rtd.), over the move by the NCS to concession its duty collection function to a foreign firm.
The PUNCH, quoting the Chairman of the committee, Senator Francis Fadahunsi, said the NCS boss was expected to bring all documents relating to the agreement he signed with the foreign firm.
The senator said, “Our committee will write the CG, NCS to demand for the documents with which the agreement was signed. He is expected to bring all the documents relating to the agreement. All of us in the committee did not support the concessioning idea.
“If the CG, NCS refuses to bring the documents, we will write the Minister of Finance who is the chairman of the board, and a centre point of the deal to bring them. We want to see the agreement. We held a meeting on the issue during the week.
“As soon as we go through the documents and we find out that it is almost the same thing which other administrations had done in the past which is just to find jobs for the ‘boys’, or a special interest for some people to steal our money, we will kick against it.
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“There is no amount of money we want to generate in the Customs that the personnel of the Nigerian Customs Service, if properly trained and monitored, cannot generate.
“What is the essence of the seven per cent cost of collection? It is to collect maximum revenue. What the Comptroller General of the NCS should do is to recruit more personnel instead of looking for foreigners to come and spend a false N3.4bn, claiming that they will spend the amount on ICT.
“Meanwhile, the NCS had already awarded a contract of almost N384m early this year on the same scanner that the foreign firm said it would invest money on.”
The PUNCH reports that the Federal Government had perfected plans to concession the Nigeria Customs Service automation project, also known as the e-customs, to a private firm.
The concessionaires were said to have promised to invest $3.1bn and generate $176bn within the 20-year contract period, estimated at about N3tn per annum.
According to the newspaper, the Federal Executive Council had approved the controversial concession contract to Messrs E-Customs HC Project Limited.
It was said to have got the job at the cost of $3.1bn for a period of 20 years under Public Private Partnership arrangement.
However, another firm, Messrs Adani Systems Limited/Webb Fontaine, had faulted the contract award to Messrs E-Customs HC Project Limited.
Adani’s management claimed that it had an existing agreement with the Federal Government to do the same project with nearly the same conditions and insisted that the E-Customs HC wanted to hijack the project.
The development drew the attention of the House of Representatives and it subsequently asked its Joint Committee on Finance and Customs to probe it.
The Joint Committee mandated the parties involved in the controversial contract to maintain status quo ante pending the outcome of the public hearing.
The PUNCH
