The Nigerian Customs modernisation project, which is Public-Private Partnership (PPP) driven, is capable of generating over $176 billion for the Federal Government in 20 years, the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) has said.
Acting Director-General of the Commission, Michael Ohiani disclosed this in Abuja at the signing ceremony of the concession deal.
The concession agreement was between the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and Trade Modernisation Project Limited, with Huawei Technologies as the Technical Partner and Africa Finance Corporation as the lead financiers, all under the regulatory supervision of the ICRC.
According to the DG ICRC, the project, which is a Presidential initiative on Customs modernisation, will attract an investment of over $3.2 billion.
“Having gone through all the PPP processes satisfactorily and obtained ICRC’s Full Business Case Compliance (FBC), the approval of the Federal Executive Council and the final vetting of the concession agreement by the Honourable Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the federation, the parties are today, ready to execute the agreement and commence implementation of the project.
“I urge the Concessionaire to ensure the full implementation of the terms of the agreement credibly and in line with global best practices.,” he said.
On his part, the Comptroller General of the NCS, Col. Hameed Ali commended the ICRC for remaining steadfast in advancing the implementation of the project.
He allayed fears that the implementation of a modernized and computerized service will lead to job losses, stressing however that the NSC would rather require an additional 15,000 staff for optimal operation.
“Let me commend ICRC, but for their steadfastness and tenacity, we would not be here celebrating this project today. We are indeed grateful and your name is written in gold.
“We are happy to say that in Nigeria we are going to be fully digitized and modernized. We are setting a pace for all other African countries to learn from. There are rumours that this project is going to weed off officers, let me allay those fears: we are even in need of officers. We have only about 15,000 and by the mission of management we need nothing less than 30,000 to effectively carry out the mandate,” he said.
The CG also hinted that the project was going to quadruple the monthly revenue of the Service.
“As of today, we are making a collection of over N210 billion to N225 billion per month. We hope that by the time we put trade modernization in place, we would triple this figure if not quadruple,” he said.
He expressed optimism that the NSC would soon invite President Muhamadu Buhari to flag off the project, calling for support from all stakeholders including staff of the Service, project partners and the media.
The representative of Huawei Technologies, Kevin Yang, said: “I just want to express our commitment that we will make sure that all the deliverables to the facility and process automation and paperless customs are achieved. We will make sure this is a world standard project.”
