To be issued a clearance receipt from the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), you must have fully paid your duties. But the customs officers who flagged Stephen Ibienne, an Abuja-based businessman, on Wednesday, June 28, argued otherwise.
They claimed Ibienne’s 2015 Mercedes-Benz ML350 was undervalued and that the cost of his duties should have been between N1.8 million and N2 million, not the N1.17 million for which the NCS issued him a receipt.
He was accused of cheating the NCS and was threatened with having his vehicle impounded. It was only after obtaining N100,000 from him twice, at two checkpoints, that they let him go.
However, by accusing Ibienne of shortchanging the NCS, they indicted their commission of failing to carry out due diligence, suggesting a potent revenue leak.
The NCS was contacted, and the commission equivocally stated that receipts are not issued to individuals except they fully pay their duties.
Ibiene was on his way back to Abuja from Lagos in his newly acquired 2015 Mercedes-Benz ML350, when customs officers stopped him at a checkpoint in the Ore axis of Ondo State.
“As of past 6 am, my first customs checkpoint was at Ore in Ondo State. The officer claimed my duty was short-paid/underpaid,” he wrote on Twitter.
Ibienne wondered how it could have been underpaid when it was the NCS that valued the car and gave clearance. But his argument was of no consequence. The officers were bent on extorting him, and they did. After much back and forth, Ibienne parted with N100,000 at the first checkpoint.
The officers threatened to seize his car if he did not pay his way out.
“I had to pay N100,000 to @FirstBankngr account 3050872560, Akinsote Oluwatoyin Victoria, and was allowed to go,” he said.
It wasn’t long after he departed that he encountered customs officers at another checkpoint. Like their colleagues at the first checkpoint, they told Ibienne that the duties for his car were underpaid, and that he had cheated the commission. This time, they demanded N150,000 from him before they would let him go.
“This team asked one of their own to drive me to the tollgate to use a POS to withdraw the said amount, so since I didn’t have anything to use to nail them, I now asked, ‘How do I sort this whole issue as my journey is still far and I can’t afford to continue paying such?’”
It was then that Ogunsoyo, the officer in charge, suggested that he take one of the officers along with him to Abuja. The catch being that he would pay N300,000 for their service.
“The officer in charge of the team, by name Ogunsoyo, now said the only way was for him to attach one of his men to me from Ondo State to Abuja, for which I would have to pay 300k. I had to plead, and we settled for 150k and hotel accommodation in Abuja.”
Ibienne was assigned Maxwell Nwosu. Nwosu asked Ibienne to take him to his house to change into a mufti, and then to the Customs Command in Ondo State to pick up his I.D. card. Ibienne said that after running Nwosu’s errands, he proceeded to ask him for an advance payment of N100,000 into a Guaranty Trust Bank (GTB) account with the name ‘Amadi Katherine Sopuruchi’. He later found out that Sopruchi was Nwosu’s wife.
Ibienne said: “Hours later, he called the wife and asked if she saw any money in her account, and she said she was shocked but had already used part of it, and she asked him where the money came from, and he told her ‘O men, na God just open way for me today o, wen I settle I go gist you‘, on top of my sweat.’”
They arrived in Abuja at about 9 pm, and Ibienne paid for a N10,000 hotel for Nwosu, who then asked Ibienne to give him his N50,000 balance in cash because he needed cash.
Ibienne said that en route to Abuja with Nwosu, he asked him why the commission cleared the vehicle and issued a receipt for it if the payment wasn’t complete.
“I had to engage him in conversations,” he said.
“I needed to understand this. None of you have said the customs duties is fake. You all are saying we didn’t pay up to the amount that ought to have been paid. How did your office collect half-payment and give receipt for it? If really there was something like an underpayment, it’s you, customs, for whatever reason, that are at fault.”
In response, Nwosu said;
“The person in the office would be settled. The clearing agent will settle the person, and the person in the office will collect half-payment, clear it and issue the receipt.
“So, why come to hold me? It was your office that the problem emanated from,” said Ibienne.
Ibienne argued that this was inaccurate. He had applied for an auto loan with his bank, FCMB, and it was the bank that financed the vehicle purchase and documentation through Autocheck Africa.
So here is the full gist with Reciept, I set out on Wednesday 28th of July from lagos to Abuja in a newly acquired 2015 Mercedes-Benz ML350 financed by @MyFCMB @fcmb_help of which all checks was carried out on the car befor purchase inclusive of customs duty.
Part 1. https://t.co/8lBuTp0WtO pic.twitter.com/BFNKgNBDK9— His Excellency Dj (@iamDjSteve) July 2, 2023
FCMB contracted AutoCheck Africa to purchase, clear, register and insure the car for Ibienne. Once this was done, Ibienne was given approval from the bank to pick up the car from Autocheck’s station.
It was on his way back from the pickup in Lagos that he met customs officers who told him he had shortchanged the commission. They claimed that the money paid for the vehicle’s customs duty was inaccurate and that he would have to pay more.
In a phone conversation with a customs officer, it was learned that the officers’ claim that Ibienne shortchanged the commission was false. The NCS does not issue a receipt if duties have not been completely paid for.
The NCS said it would look into the report and respond appropriately. They also asked Ibienne to write a letter of complaint addressing the comptroller-general, attaching with it all available evidence of the extortion he endured at the hands of their officers.
