CUSTOMS AND THE HIGHWAYS OF EXTORTION
The many checkpoints on the highways offer little to admire
As a federal agency, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has a mandate to patrol the borders and prevent illegal goods from coming into the country. But at some point, the NCS became notorious for raiding hotels and car lots to impound cars without ‘proper’ papers. Now, this controversial culture has been extended to the highways where operatives of the agency mount checkpoints and extort motorists on the pretext of examining vehicle duty payment papers.
Across the country today, concerns are mounting over this illegality. Besides the sometime suffocating roadblocks mounted by the police, soldiers, men of the Federal Road Safety Corps, and even by overzealous touts, the NCS has become an additional burden to motorists, leading to frustration and unnecessary delays. They seize vehicles, and so-called contraband goods and in the process extort money from their unlucky victims. At some checkpoints, motorists with vehicles as old as 10 years or more, are intimidated and forced to part with money as the operatives have the monopoly of knowing whether the papers are genuine or fake or whether there is underpayment.
Depending on the make of the vehicle, owners are made to part between N20,000 and N300,000 as ‘fuel money’ to NCS officials at the roadblocks. Though often on the move, the ever-busy Naval Base area of the Abuja-Lokoja Highway in Kogi State, the Ibilor area in Edo State and the Okene-Edo-Ekiti route, are cited as some of the notorious checkpoints where these NCS operatives ply their trade. Only last August, a member representing Ovia Federal Constituency of Edo State, Dennis Idahosa, petitioned the Comptroller General of the NCS, Hameed Ali over alleged extortion and harassment of motorists and other road users at Ekiadolor, along the Benin-Ore-Lagos Highway. While acknowledging the fact that activities of smugglers and importers of contraband goods must be checked, Idahosa noted that this should not be used as an avenue to extort innocent and hardworking Nigerians.
A year ago, two young Nigerians were killed by NCS officers because of an argument which ensued over two bags of rice. “This unprofessional conduct that involves extortion and harassment of motorists by some officers and men of the NCS, Federal Operation Unit, stationed at Ekiadolor, has become an embarrassment to road users,” said Idahosa. “Members of the NCS lavish money illegally obtained from commuters who most times have their correct customs papers or have brought in goods as personal effects.” Not long ago, the Shoe Dealers Association in Jos also accused some operatives of the NCS of extortion in spite of the fact that their members do not deal in illegal goods.
Pertinent questions persist: why should a vehicle whose documentation passed through several customs desks at the ports of entry be undervalued? Who should take the blame for this lop-sidedness? Even though the law empowers a customs officer to stop and search vehicles on suspicion that the duty is not paid or the vehicle is carrying goods whose duty have not been paid, it is clear that many of the roadblocks mounted across the highways are illegal. The money collected from the patrol points does not go into the government coffers since receipts are never issued, and are therefore brazen acts of corruption.
Hameed Ali must be concerned about the image of the institution he heads. On assumption of duty, he had on his agenda the passionate determination to increase revenue, sanitise the NCS and restore dignity to the agency notorious for underhand businesses. With worsening cases of extortion on the highways, there is still much to do to earn people’s confidence on the last score.
