Posted by By STEVE NWOSU on
Fresh facts emerging from the waiver scandal in the customs have revealed how Nigeria lost well over N258 billion in import duty concessions granted by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration between 2003 and May 2007.
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Fresh facts emerging from the waiver scandal in the customs have revealed how Nigeria lost well over N258 billion in import duty concessions granted by the former President Olusegun Obasanjo administration between 2003 and May 2007.
President Umaru Yar'Adua recently announced the cancellation of the waivers granted by the last administration, citing gross abuse by both beneficiaries and government officials.
The concessions granted mainly to cronies of the former president, as well as businesses in which family and friends of the ex-president are believed to have interest are now the subject of monumental unease in the presidency, as efforts are now underway to get Yar'Adua to come down more drastically on the racket - beyond the cancellation of the controversial waivers.
According to a presidency source, calculations by some members of the new presidential economic team suggest that no less than N258 billion may have been lost to the waiver racketeers in outright duty cancellations, a figure said to be exclusive of the losses incurred through deliberate wrong classification of imports to ensure they attract lesser tariffs.
For, according to the source, instances where the racketeers fail to secure outright waivers for their cronies, they had fallen back on wrong classification, so that certain classes of goods which should statutorily attract as much as 100% duty are reclassified as 'raw material', 'machinery' or any such category of imports - sometimes attracting duties as low as 2.5% (which in some instances, are not even paid eventually).
The culprits
Apparently determined to get to the root of the scam, the Presidency is said to have raised several queries, one of which is insisting that the Comptroller General of Customs has questions to answer as to how an otherwise laudable waiver practice, used to ensure that certain welfare/non-profit items are brought in with relative ease came to such monumental abuse. The new order in the import regulation practices is, therefore, insisting that the leadership of the customs always knew the unconstitutionality of such abuses, and was in a position to check it, but rather feigned ignorance and - in some instances - overtly encouraged it for its own selfish profiteering considerations.
Secondly, some members of the Yar'Adua's economic team are also insisting that the companies which profited from the waiver racket should not only be sanctioned, but be made to refund the amount to the coffers of the federal government. There is also a move to reappraise all other import-related incentives granted to manufacturers, as well as the auditing of such incentives, many of which are believed to have been used to give unfair advantage to cronies of ex-president Obasanjo over their business competitors and to the ultimate ruin of the national economy.
Furthermore, Saturday Sun gathered, there has also been a call on the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to step in, investigate and make necessary recommendations as to how culprits can be brought to book.
President Yar'Adua who is said to be infuriated at the latest discoveries, Saturday Sun gathered, has directed that he be furnished with more details, especially, as to (i) How much of these waivers was really necessary, (ii) How much went to political cronies and (iii) How many were really deserved, among others.
Abusing a good policy, robbing the states, local govts
Meanwhile a presidency source who hinted Saturday Sun on the latest discovery argued that Obasanjo had no constitutional powers to grant the waivers in the way and manner that he did, without due process.
He said this was "more so considering that the repercussion of such indiscriminate granting of waivers was the ultimate depletion of revenue earnings due to the federation account - an account in which the other two tiers of government have as much stake as the federal government."
Hear him: "The money belongs to the state, the local governments and the federal government, and it is illegal for the president to wake up one morning and grant waivers that would deny that common pool money running into hundreds of billions of naira without the backing of any act of the national assembly or the consent of the other tiers of government".
"Waivers of this magnitude are not some of those things you do by presidential fiat", he further added.
Import waivers are usually granted either to people who are importing items directly for government or specific government programmes and projects like CHOGM, COJA and specific national festivals.
From time to time, the federal government also approves waivers for specified state of the federation, government agencies and parastatals to import such things as selected drugs, medical equipment, raw materials among other. In such instances, however, the items to be so imported are specified.
Over the past eight years, however, many political crony beneficiaries of the waivers have used them to import goods which should ordinarily not be granted waiver or which statutorily attract higher import duties than the waiver would specify.