Why Land Borders Will Remain Closed ― Ali Tells NASS – TheNigerialawyer

* Committee summons CBN Governor, CG, Immigration

Indication has emerged that the nations land borders would
remain closed for a long time.

Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali made the revelations
on Wednesday before a joint Committee of Finance of the Senate and
the House of Representatives.

Findings revealed that there has been a partial closure of the
nations land borders for over two months.

The Senate at its plenary last week was divided over the federal
government action. Some of the lawmakers expressed the opinion that
the closure would be counterproductive in the long term as those
engaged in legitimate businesses across the borders were at the
received end of the federal government action.

But addressing the joint session of the Senate and the House of
Representatives Committee on Finance , which invited heads of
federal agencies for discussion on the Medium Term Expenditure
Framework/ Fiscal Strategy Paper as prelude to the 2020 Budget,
Colonel Ali justified the action of the federal government which he
noted has jerked up the revenue base of government,
significantly.

He said importers who have been using the ports of neighbouring
West African states were now forced to move their good through the
nation seaports.

He said:” When we closed the border my fear was that our revenue
is going to drop. To be honest our revenue kept increasing. There
was a day in September that we collected N9.2billion in one day. It
has never happened before. This is after the closure of the border
and since then, we have maintained an average of about N4.7billion
to N5.8 billion on a daily basis which is far more than we used to
collect.

“What we have discovered is that most of those cargoes that used
to go to Benin (Republic), shipped to Benin, continue and then
discharged and smuggled into Nigeria, now that we have closed the
border they are forced to bring their goods to either Apapa or Tin
Can Island and we have to collect duty on them.

“If that would continue, to us, it is a welcome situation. As a
matter of fact, to answer your question, our revenue has not
reduced. As a matter, it is increasing as a result of closing the
border.”

The Customs Comptroller also restated claims that fuel
consumption within the country has reduced drastically as a result
of the closure.

“About 10.2million litres of fuel has now been cut down from
what we have been assuming to have been consuming. This 10.2million
litres of fuel is always going to across the border. The issue here
is that there is an incentive because there is a price
differential. And that is why our people keep pushing this
fuel.

“If you go to Ilaro today, the filling stations that are
there…in Idiroko, there are over 50 to 60 filling stations in one
place and they are close to the border. And what we have discovered
is that they bring in fuel in the afternoon and in the night they
siphon it. They do that every day and this is why we keep saying we
are consuming so many litres of fuel every day.”

The joint Committee expressed disappointment over the absence of
Governor of the Central Bank, Godwin Emefiele and the Comptroller
General, Immigration, Mohammed Babandede, as both shunned the
invitation of the Joint Committee.

The joint Committee directed that they should appear before it
today.

The CBN Governor neither sent a representative nor an apology
letter to the joint committee’s sitting yesterday.

The Finance Minister, Zainab Ahmed, in her presentation before
the committee yesterday explained the content of the MTEF/FSP
document to the NASS joint committee on Finance.