N23.6bn unrepatriated funds: Customs to write ministries, departments

THE Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) is set to write ministries and departments over claims

that Nigeria has since June 2015, been exporting oil and non-oil products without documentation. A development that has made the country to lose over N23.6billion expected repatriated proceeds of the export within the period.

Speaking to Tribune Online exclusively via telephone, the Customs national spokesman, Joseph Attah stated that he would not be able to give a concise response to enquiries on the matter since the issue cuts across ministries and departments of government.

According to him, “I won’t be able to answer your enquiries on the pre-shipment issues and loss of revenue over non documentation process at the port since 2015 because it cuts across ministries and departments of governments.

“These are not issues you expect to get response to just on the phone. We will have to write other parties concerned because we are talking of something that led to non repatriation of expected money.”

It would be recalled that during an investigative public hearing organised by a Joint Committee of the Senate Committees on Finance, Trade and Investment, Gas, Petroleum Upstream, Banking, Insurance and Other Financial Institutions, Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, and Customs, Excise and Tariff on the “Need to Investigate Pre Shipment Inspection of Export Activities in Nigeria; it was discovered that over $850billion supposedly earned by the country between 1996 and 2014 from its crude oil export proceeds are yet to be repatriated to the country by the Joint Venture Oil Companies, a development it noted, was in total contravention of Nigeria’s Pre-shipment Inspection of Export Act and Article 26 of Export Policy Guidelines and procedures for crude oil, Gas and non-oil goods.

The revelations pointed to the fact that there had been gross violation of the Pre-shipment Inspection of Export Act by certain institutions of government.

A deputy director in the Federal Ministry of Trade and Investment, Usman Ndanusa, who represented the ministry at the investigative public hearing, disclosed that the country had since June 2015, been exporting its oil and non-oil products without measurement and documentation.

He said the development followed the disengagement of pre-shipment inspection agents at the various export terminals in the country and their subsequent replacement with agents who were merely asked by the Federal Government without legal and constitutional backing to carry out the pre-shipment work at the terminals.