On Monday, a girl who was billed to wed on Saturday returned from UK
aboard British Airways flight. After going through Immigration checks,
she went to the carousel to pick her luggage. As she was exiting from
arrivals, she was stopped by a Nigerian Customs Service officer who
directed her to open her luggage. She complied.
After they searched her
luggage and did not find anything incriminating, they picked her wedding
gown and said it was contraband; therefore she had to pay N30, 000 tax
for it. She protested and said that it was her personal effect; that she
did not buy it for sale and there was only one wedding gown in her
luggage. They insisted she must pay.
She then called her
brother who was waiting for her outside the airport to pick her home. He
called another Customs official at the airport, who advised her to give
“something” to the official that insisted she must pay tax. After she
gave them “something”, she was allowed to go with the “contraband”,
wedding gown.
A worker with ground handling company at the Murtala
Muhammed International Airport, Lagos told THISDAY that the target of
every Customs official who comes to work at that arrivals area every day
is to go home with at least $1000.
Sometimes they come short of their target; sometimes they exceed their target.
THISDAY observed that the most lucrative period is during the arrival
of Emirates and Ethiopian Airlines flights when traders from China and
Dubai check out their goods from the carousel. The alert Customs
officials would be as busy as ever. Their hawkish eyes tell them the
passengers that will “sing” and the luggage that has indicting content.
And most often they are right; experience counts.
In order to ensure
that every passenger with potential possibility to “drop” is gathered
in, the Customs also engages the trolley service providers, who meet and
negotiate with the passenger with heavily laden luggage.
The
ground handling company worker explained: “The trolley man will
negotiate how much he will pay so that his luggage will not be searched
by Customs officials. Whatever they agree on will be related to the
Customs people and the money is in dollars. But if the passenger refuses
“to play ball”, the Customs officials will stop him, open the
passenger’s luggage and search everything. This will waste his time and
at the end of the day and in the process, they will see things they will
label contraband or banned material he must not take into the country.
“They
will seize those things and he will be forced to pay for them. Whatever
he will pay, will be more than five times what he was initially asked
to pay. And this time they will approach you officially and ask you to
go to the bank and pay with receipts and bring back your teller. By the
time they finish with you, you will spend two to three hours in that
process. So those who are familiar with the game usually negotiate and
pay,” the worker told THISDAY.
Last year, a group of businessmen
and women who trade in ECOWAS countries protested collectively when they
were asked to pay for the goods they bought from Senegal and other West
African countries. They protested that part of the ECOWAS principles is
free market among member nations, but the Customs officials insisted
that the Nigerian businessmen go there to buy goods imported into those
countries therefore they must pay taxes on them. At the end of the day
the businessmen were forced to negotiate.
An official of the
Federal Airports Authority of Nigerian (FAAN) at the international wing
of the Lagos airport told THISDAY that the major problem with Nigerian
rules and regulations is that they can be made arbitrary by those who
are meant to enforce them like the Nigerian Police Force, the Nigerian
Customs Service, the Nigerian Immigration Service and others. These
rules are twisted to serve personal interests. So it will be difficult
to put a check on this because when people complain and send their
complaint through the proper channels, it is still those indicted that
are called to explain what happened and naturally, they usually
exonerate themselves.
“We see this extortion take place every day
but there is nothing we can do. Those officers at their offices are
complicities, so who are you to complain to? Sometimes I pity the
passengers who are being ripped off every day. There was a time we said
we will install cameras everywhere but the problem is not really the
installation of cameras. Who monitors the cameras and these people are
very hostile. We provide the operational facilities but we don’t to have
control over anybody. Every paramilitary personnel at this airport
should be answerable to the Chief Security Officer of FAAN, but they
don’t seem to recognise that,” the FAAN official said.
Many
Nigerians know their rights but there are so some who do not. The
problem is that those that know, when they insist the right thing be
done they are overruled or are told things have changed and the
enforcers would insist on the imagined new change, just to get what they
want. It is only when they know the person concerned has access to
higher authorities and could report them that they concede and do the
right thing.
So even in this new political atmosphere of change
the excesses at the airports may escape the gale of change that is
sweeping through the country.