Customs Boss Accuses Banks Of Sabotaging E-Auction Exercise

Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has accused 17 Money deposit banks of sabotaging the recently launched e-auction bidding exercise.

Recall that NCS on 4th July launched the Electronic Auction (E-Auction) portal as bidding for seized and overtime vehicles.

The Comptroller-General, Col. Hameed Alli (rtd) in an interactive session with the Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) of 17 banks, said he was concerned over the refusal of the bank to participate in the e-auction bidding exercise .

He said: “I am surprised and I don’t know what to say. This is an economic sabotage. The money you are going to collect is not coming to Customs, it is not coming to me as a person, it is going to the federation account that will be distributed to the three tiers of government. So, you deny that.”.

He also noted that the same banks that participated in auction exercise when it was run manually, were reluctant to be part of the e-auction bidding process.

“For us to initiate this process and the banks pull out calls for concern. One is that we want to get some funds from there.

“Two, it’s going to ease the process of what we do, and it will encourage transparency in what we do. And the essence of what we do is to ensure that there is transparency collected revenue for the federation,” he said.

However the bank representatives took turns to explain their challenges with the e-auction bidding.

According to Zenith Bank Plc, its mostly technical issues and the bank is already working on its software to participate in the exercise.

Guaranty Trust Bank said no bank would deliberately sabotage the process, while Citi Bank noted that the agreement it had with the NCS that elapsed in December 2014 was yet to be revalidated.