Everyone knows my testimony: Nigeria worked for me. It provided me EVERYTHING a young man would have wished for. So, my desire daily is that Nigeria works for others, and that is why we try to explore how we can have a working nation. On that, I do hope the Nigerian government considers this observation from Peter Obi:
“A situation where at the point of initiating importation, Form M and other documents related to importation are based on a particular rate of exchange, for example, N1000 to $1, being the prevailing exchange rate at the time which the importer of goods was used to calculate the entire process, from the import initiation to receipt of goods in his warehouse. Then suddenly when the goods arrive in Nigeria, and duties are calculated at different rates, say N1400 to $1, it becomes a serious business challenge that results in business losses,” Peter Obi said.
Floating Naira does mean we cannot honour contracts. I have posited that Customs should not become a blinded rainmaker for Nigeria as doing that we will make it a poison pill: the more radical revenue from Customs, the more Nigeria’s economy is dying since these revenues are import-driven, not export-driven. We must ask the government to allow predictability in the market system.
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The newspapers and TV pundits hailed that for the nation. Yet, if you look deeper, you will notice one thing: Nigeria is becoming a trading hub as companies shift to export instead of make in Nigeria, since the Customs revenue is not coming from exports as ships are still leaving our ports largely empty. Also, these are not equipment and machinery; these are basic imports of household and business consumables which ought to be made in Nigeria.
Again, we commend the Customs team but we must not celebrate these huge numbers. For everything, the double digit growth we’re seeing in the customs revenue will remind us that Nigeria is being de-industrialized!
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