"CUSTOMS DUTY" HITS THE SMALL SCREEN

UNCLAS ABUJA 000276 SIPDIS DEPARTMENT PLEASE ALSO PASS TO USTR PATRICK COLEMAN E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: PGOV KCOR ETRD KDEM NI SUBJECT: "CUSTOMS DUTY" HITS THE SMALL SCREEN REF: A. ABUJA 235 ¶B. LAGOS 309 ¶1. President Obasanjo announced in January that he was revamping the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) because it was thoroughly corrupt and neither collecting proper duties not keeping out items the President had banned from importation (reftels). The NCS Controller General was sacked along with several other senior officers. A "new" NCS is emerging, and it now has its own TV news show, "CustomsDuty" at 10pm each Monday. ¶2. This week's half-hour show was not badly done. The first story was a stakeholders meeting of Finance Minister Ngozi, representatives of shipping companies, the ports authorities and NCS working out new procedures for clearing shipments, and Ngozi told the audience she hoped all Nigerians would watch "CustomsDuty" each week. The second story was on a World Customs Association training program for NCS personnel, supported by USAID. A third story refuted accusations in the press that four seized containerloads of drugs had been auctioned off by the NCS as auto parts, but the fourth story reported the suspension of nine NCS officers for diverting and selling four tankers of vegoil that were supposed to be transshipped to Niger. ¶3. The show then turned to interaction with viewers. Acting Controller General Ogungbemile started with a press conference, pushing for a "Strong emphasis on plugging revenue leakages" in the NCS. While he spoke and answered questions from the audience, the show's e-mail address flashed across the bottom of the screen with encouragement for viewers to e-mail questions that would be answered on the show. The last 5 minutes of the show then turned to the uniformed NCS presenter of the show answering the questions, ranging from defining what "commercial quantities" of an item are compared to amounts "for personal use" to a rather in-depth explanation for those who want to import items like orange juice on the banned list. ¶4. COMMENT: If NCS administered the ban on imported orange juice over the last several months as well it did the TV show, one would not find more imported orange juice than domestic on the shelves of most grocery stores in Abuja. While we of course are working the GON to overturn the bans, it should be noted that most items on the banned list have been entering anyway by Nigerian importers paying a bribe to customs officers that was less than the tariff before the ban. Few U.S. companies have complained (Ref B) that their sales in Nigeria have decreased after the bans, perhaps for this reason. ROBERTS