This week has been an eye opener for me to the way the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) works in Nigeria in terms of how duties are determined, calculated and paid.
I speak mainly from my experience with DHL and their interpretation of the process.
I bought some items from Amazon and shipped them to MyUs.com which happens to be an excellent shipping service. I will write about them later.
Once all the items I wanted was complete, I asked myus.com to ship them to me here in Nigeria. To effect the shipping, I chose DHL as the shipper, the other option was FedEx which is definitely a good courier company. I chose DHL because I have used them quite well in the past and they have a good web, phone and email tracking system that allows you to know where your items are most of the time.
Well, by the DHL tracker my item was in Lagos by Monday and had gone through sorting only to read that it was experiencing clearance delay.
I waited and hoped that it would move on but also prepared to receive a call from DHL about the situation, the later was the case and around 1230pm the next day, I got a call telling me about the delay and the duty that I have to pay.
I asked for the email to be sent to me and this was sent out immediately.
Upon reading it, I saw that the total cost of the invoice was way above the cost of the things I bought, but I already had an answer to that the DHL agent or rather customs’s agent as he was very enthusiastic to tell me that NCS has a market value that they impose on items when they feel the invoice has been understated or undervalued in their words. So without requesting for evidence or sighting any documents NCS can blatantly decide the cost of any item they see. So the question is do they have a standard list of prices or does the list change as the harmattan temperature changes or is this the so-called Nigerian factor at work?
Moreover, the duty that is calculated is one that is based on the total cost of the invoice and not the item of interest. First, I had some stuff for my kids in the package, tiara, socks, shorts, pants and some for my wife. It was these items that attracted customs to the package. Second, the cost of the ‘clothes ensemble’ was definitely less than the total invoice cost as I had a book, some DVDs and a card reader in the package. So according to the NCS calculation from the DHL/NCS rep, the total dutiable invoice cost is my original total + some additional ‘market value’.
What this means is that 1) though the total levy is 45%, due to the regime of taxing the total, the duty can easily be in the region of 70%
2) With the additional cost added to the total, the duty on the clothes easily rises 300% of the original cost of the items.
I don’t believe and will not believe that the government of Nigeria will deliberately put such a load on her citizens.
I am yet to receive my goods from DHL but I am hopeful that between them and the NCS, the issue will be resolved and I will be able to pick up my items but more importantly, it is necessary that the right thing is done in the interest of this great nation. I understand that some people try to cheat the system and that is unfortunate and pitiable but to set up a scarcity mentality and blatantly label everyone a crook is a worse solution.