The comptroller general of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), has disclosed that the Concessionaire for the Customs modernisation project also known as e-customs, has invested over $300million in the project.
The concessionaires for the controversial modernisation project are Bergman Securities Consultant and suppliers limited as the project sponsor, Africa Finance Corporation, UFC as lead financier while Huawei Technologies will be trained as lead technical service provider.
The concession however, generated so much controversy with several court cases and a court Order stopping the implementation of the project. Also, lately some top Customs officers have written to President Bola Tinubu to cancel the project.
However, speaking to journalists after observing parades of Cadets at the Customs Training College (CTC), Ikeja, the Customs CG, said the project is a Public Private Partnership (PPP), and at no cost to the government.
According to him, the modernisation was to put the Nigeria Customs at par with its contemporaries across the world who have moved to paperless transaction.
“Government won’t take anything out of its budget, their (concessionaires) repayment will come from Customs collection and we will finance this to get more revenue. They will deploy their money and they have to recoup their money. As at today, they have put over $300miliion on ground to be able to get to where we are.
“We laid the foundation for the modernisation because we needed more rigorous modernisation project process whereby in the course of doing our transaction it must get to a point that we are at par with best Customs administrations and most Customs administration today are working on a paperless process,” Col Ali stated.”
He stated further, “We thought we needed to do that and we started the process and we went through the rigors of getting concessionaires and along the course of the process their are people who dropped out for whatever reasons. We embarked on the process to ensure the process come to reality and today it’s a reality.
On the ground and will start functioning very soon.”
The Customs CG, however, stated that the modernisation project is on ground and would start functioning, saying he was highly disappointed in the controversy it’s generating.
He further stated that the project has full support of the top Customs management staff.
“It’s something that am surprised that their is so much controversy on it. It’s a straight forward project, it’s about modernisation which we adopted and it started when I came in In 2015.
“There are so many stories about court cases, about wasting $3.62 billion but it’s a PPP project. These guys will earn their money from what we collect and not that government will take anything out of its pocket. It will come from Customs collection.
“We have done all the sensitisation to carry all our officers along and I can assure you that all officers that are today serving are in tune with this concept, they have imbibe it and all senior officers are in tune with this modernisation.”
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