Stella Oduah : breached the rules
The Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) on Wednesday said that the Federal
Ministry of Finance granted a waiver of N10.1 million to Coscharis
Motors for the purchase of the two BMW cars by the Nigeria Civil
Aviation Authority (NCAA).
The NCS told the House of
Representatives Committee on Aviation investigating the alleged
importation of the cars by the NCAA for the Minister of Aviation Ms
Stella Oduah that the said waiver was to import 300 vehicles, including
the controversial two BMW cars.
Representative of the
Comptroller-General of the NCS, Mr Manasseh Jatau, a Deputy Comptroller
of Customs, disclosed this in his presentation at the public hearing of
the case on Wednesday in Abuja.
He
said the point of entry of the cars was Tincan Port in Lagos, adding
that no import duty was collected from the owner of the goods (Coscharis
Motors) as a one-year duty waiver for 300 cars was granted in the name
of the company for importation of cars for Eko 2012 Games in Lagos.
Jatau
said the exemption on the two BMW cars along with 298 others was at the
expense of the Lagos State Government, who would have been the
beneficiaries of the payment.
Documents presented to the committee
by the NCS showed that the Import Duty, VAT, ETLS, CISS and Port
Charges Waiver Certificate was issued by the Ministry of Finance on
Nov. 20, 2012.
The document was signed by the Director of Revenue, Mrs Rose Ngozi-Maranzu, on behalf of the finance minister.
Jatau
also disclosed that contrary to earlier reports, the Office of the
National Security Adviser duly issued an approval for the purchase of
the armoured cars.
He said a signed copy of a pre-shipment
inspection end-user certificate issued by the NSA on June 6, 2013,
showed that due approval was gotten from the office for Coscharis Motors
to import three armoured cars valued at 223,653.48 dollars into Nigeria
for commercial purposes.
The document, identified as “Form A’’, had the stamp of the Office of the National Security Adviser appended on it.
Members
of the Committee were engaged, for over 30 minutes, in a heated
argument with Coscharis Motors in a move to ascertain the market price
of the vehicles.
While the committee insisted that the current
price of the vehicle should not exceed N50 million each, Coscharis
outrightly refuted this position, saying it could never be the case with
BMW B7 series anywhere in the world.
Coscharis, represented by
the company’s Chairman Mr Cosmos Maduka, alleged that the NCAA demanded
an increase in the prices of the controversial vehicles over what the
company had submitted earlier.
“NCAA told us that the initial price is not proper,” Maduka, said.
He
also said the cars were sold to NCAA as used vehicles following the
delay encountered when the company sought clearance from the office of
the NSA.
But the committee insisted that Coscharis deceived the
public and the government by saying that the cars were bought for NCAA
when actually they were purchased on behalf of the Lagos State
Government.
The committee also accused the company of ripping Nigerians off.
According
to the committee, the change in the prices of the vehicles from the
initial N70 million to N127.5 million, even when the company had
admitted that it got waiver from the government not to pay customs
duties on the cars, cast aspersion on the company’s position on the
prices.
NAN also reports that the hearing later took a dramatic
turn when the committee discovered that the company supplied different
make and type of vehicles.
A member of the committee and
spokesperson of the House of Representatives, Hon. Zakari Mohammed, said
that the chassis number of one of the vehicles inspected by a
delegation from the committee read DW68011.
He argued that the number differed from what Coscharis gave in their correspondences with the office of the NSA.
But in a swift response, Maduka refuted this, quoting the chassis numbers as 68044 and 68432, respectively.
He, however, promised to send the certificate issued by the NSA for the purchase of the cars to the committee.
Earlier,
the company had requested to play a video to demonstrate how exotic the
cars were in a bid to justify the prices, but the request was turned
down by the committee.
Also the former Acting Director-General of
NCAA, Mr Joyce Nkemakolam told the Committee that he approved a leasing
agreement rather than a loan, with First Bank Plc on the purchase of the
cars because of an advice he received from his colleagues.
A
member of the committee, Rep. Raphael Nnanna-Igbokwe had asked why the
NCAA insisted on going on with the leasing agreement after being
informed by First Bank Plc that it was not disposed to leasing facility
but loan facility.
“I signed the agreement based on advice from
my colleagues that leasing and loan facilities are the same. I thought
the templates are the same,’’ Nkemakolam said.
But Committee was
shocked when the acting Director-General said though as the Chief
Executive Officer during the period under investigation, he was not
aware of the details of the delivery of the two vehicles.
