DHL, UPS, FedEx and other multinational and indigenous logistics companies operating in Nigeria must do more to pressure the Federal Government to change its laws affecting duties payable on Nigerians for personal shipments.
Whenever you ship a package of personal items, even if it is not up to 3KG, the unscrupulous Nigerian customs immediately begins to look for how to assess exorbitant charges on these packages, sometimes up to tens of thousands of Naira. This sum that is often assessed on the packages by the Nigerian Customs and their cohorts in the shipping companies is sometimes more than the value of the goods in the package.
Consider a resident of Lagos, Fola’s recent experience with shipping DHL from Florida through MYUS.com, the goods were worth N140,000 and comprised of toys and personal cosmetics. Shipping by DHL cost N50,000 and when the goods arrived Nigeria, DHL did not even bother to call Fola for days after the package arrived Nigeria.
When Fola finally became exhausted and contacted DHL, the logistics company informed him that Customs had applied a duty of N57,000 to the package, and Fola was to credit the amount to DHL’s account with GTBank before shipment could be delivered.
DHL takes the payment in behalf of Customs so as to deduct its own portion of the duty fraudulently due to Customs. Other companies like UPS and FedEX also engage in this predatory and borderline fraudulent and unfair business practice.
Usually when consumers protest, they will witness their duty slashed by up to 50%, however something hefty must usually be dropped by the Nigerian consumer and this is a manner by which these companies wittingly or unwittingly conspire with the Federal Government through the Nigerian Customs to further impoverish Nigeria, one of the poorest nations on Earth. Government and these business organizations do not give a thought on how to make shipping internationally seamless to the Nigerian consumer but are instead very eager to continue to impose these charges so as to hit revenue targets placed upon the agents by senior management.
Of course bribery and corruption is still very active in the Customs sector, and according to an anonymous source working in one of the aforementioned courier firms, with the right bribe, Customs will look the other way, and/or reduce already exorbitant charges.
The source told The Herald, “this is especially frequent with yahoo boys.” Quite a shame that a nation like Nigeria cannot afford its citizens the option to get their goods without imposition of arbitrary customs duty and charges, meanwhile fraudsters are able to negotiate better rates.