Nigerians are buying fewer cars while private jet owners exit the country

According to the Nigerian Customs Service, importation of cars dropped by an alarming 45%. This is due to the economic hardship plaguing the country, particularly with its foreign exchange rate. Adewale Adeniyi, Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, provided this information in an interview with Arise Television.

As seen in the Nigerian newspaper, The Punch, an interview conducted by the TV station; Arise with Adewale Adeniyi, revealed that Q1 for Nigerian businesses was detrimental, given the country's weak currency.

"It affected car dealers. We had as much as a 45 percent decrease in the volume of cars that were brought into Nigeria in that period.

And they were not the kind of cars that fetched optimum revenue for the customs. Not only cars, but even regular imports were also affected because people could no longer import raw materials as they wanted and the volatility did not allow them to plan for tomorrow," Adewale Adeniyi disclosed.

However, he noted that Q2 might be better, as there are already signs of initiatives being put in place to combat these issues.

"But we see some relative degree of stability in the second quarter because there are lots of discussions going on. Some at the level of the National Assembly, most of them spearheaded by the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, bring on the stakeholders that are involved together, to ensure that we achieve stability," the CGC added.

Private Jet Debacle

During the interview, the Comptroller General spoke about the recent debacle with the verification directive given to private jet owners.

In June, the Federal Government, through the Nigerian Customs Service, initiated a new campaign to clamp down on operators of illegally imported private planes entering the country.

To this effect, they launched a verification exercise, with the expectation that no less than 80 operators of private jets would appear at the headquarters of the NCS in Abuja with their aircraft import documents.

However, that has not been the case, as a good number of these operators have chosen to leave the country instead of verifying their documents.

"Very few of them have shown up for verification and we gathered from intelligence that a good number of them have been leaving Nigeria since the announcement was given because they would not want to be verified," Adeniyi stated.

"We have seen so many of these aircraft flying and our record tends to show that only a few of them have shown up to pay duty and this is why we are bringing this verification up," he added.

The Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority gave information to the CGC, indicating that despite numerous private aircraft flying in the nation, very few of them paid customs duty.

"We discovered that there were more private jets that were operating in Nigeria but had not been brought under the ambit of the law. So, the data that we got from the NCAA showed that only very few of them paid customs duty to operate in Nigeria," Adeniyi stated.