In Benin Republic, the country's seaport, Port Autonome de Cotonou is the highest revenue earner. Repositioned to ambush an estimated CFA 204 billion (51 billion) per annum from the Nigerian economy, the port is to the tiny West African country what oil is to Nigeria. Indeed, until it became the fattest cash cow, cotton was the country's highest foreign exchange earner.

Bereft of mineral deposits like crude oil, steel, gold or bauxite, Benin had had for decades to tother along on miserable state budgets that kept some of its most deserving civil servants in queue for a motorcycle loan. But all that has changed, and pretty well too, since the day Benin woke up and realised it can re-engineer its economy. It did not only look inward, it looked across the border at its giant neighbour Nigeria with huge resources but catalogue of crippling woes.

Dazed by the fabled resources of its neighbour but scandalised by daily tales of corruption, plunder of oil wealth, abandonment of projects and a skewed bureaucracy that clogs the wheel of everything, Benin must have decided to take an advantage while the giant is still on her knees. Drawing from the experience of others which shows that the best way to do business with Nigerians is sell to them what they already have, the French-speaking country had no problem coming up with something.

Not even the fact that Nigeria has eight seaports could discourage Benin from selling the services of its only port to Nigerian importers. As Saturday Sun discovered in an investigation staggered over three trips to Cotonou, the success story of how Benin turned Nigeria's woes to her gains is etched on every facet of that country's national life. It actually begins from the black market at Krake (Benin's side of Seme border) where at any given minute, a platoon of Nigeria traders and businessmen, on their way to Cotonou, could be found chasing available CFA currency with their loads of naira notes.

For anyone coming in from Nigeria, the 60 kilometer journey from Krake, through Seme town, to Cotonou is actually a pleasure ride. The six-lane highway that boasts of no noticeable crack, let alone a pothole, is a window to a highly organised society. Two additional lanes on Route de Porto Novo are restricted with fancy aluminium works and serve motorbike riders and paedestrians respectively. Given the glitter of the road, one would be inclined to think that it was paved with gold.

Indeed, at the tollgate at Mivvo where the highway opens to 14 lanes, the Cotonou road actually looks like the tarmac of an international airport.

Whether your destination is Dantokpa, Missebou, Jounquet, Sekandji, Tankpe, St. Rita or Port Douane, the evidence of Benin prosperity stares you in the face. The city oozes of a new found affluence: from marble homes to glass houses sprouting on well manicured landscape. True, some of the best houses in Apapa Park Lane, Ikoyi, Victoria Island and Victoria Garden City would look so ordinary if placed side by side to Cotonou's chateau.

In 2003 when this reporter visited Cotonou, work was in progress on a second bridge across the Tokpa river in the city centre. Since 2004 or late 2003, that bridge had been commissioned in fulfillment of a well articulated urban planning. The long and short of it is that in the eye of a long- suffering Nigerian traveller, Cotonou is some kind of El Dorado. The system is set in clockwork fashion: electricity supply is 24 hours, so no one sells or buys generators. The taps run; the street and traffic lights are modern, and the roundabouts expansive. Here and there, construction works are going on and even from a distance, it is clear enough that the engineering is carried out with meticulous care.

It was gathered that the government of Benin is always counting on customs revenue to help finance public spending. To this, it has invested heavily on the seaport and road network, having hugely based its economy on re-export or transit trade with Nigeria. Again, having also elevated itself to a regional port, Cotonou is today recognized as an access corridor, serving not only Nigeria but Niger Republic and the eastern parts of landlocked Mali and Bukina Faso. As a way of notching up volume of transshipment trade, Cotonou has completed the asphalting of the Savalou-Djougou and Natitingou-Porga highways and other road construction projects.

For the ordinary traveler, it would be difficult to believe that re-export trade is a major pillar of Benin's massive development projects. Saturday Sun gathered that the gains from the port are ploughed into other sectors to boost employment and private sector participation. Indeed, the multiplier is evident. In place of motorbikes purchased on government loans, the roads are crawling with sleek automobiles including the most fashionable 4-wheel runner. The visitor can also see that Small and Medium Enterprise is on the flourish as civil servants resigns to find more rewarding engagements in other areas including smuggling and transshipment services. Yes, motorbikes are still there but mainly in commercial services to augument a public transportation overstretched by the army of Nigerian traders and businessmen that invade Cotonou on a daily basis.

As the visitor spends more days in the city, other indicators of a robust economy emerge. One significant area that Saturday Sun discovered was the media. Aside the state owned daily newspaper, La Nation, there are more than 20 privately-owned newspapers in Cotonou. The national television station is ORTB (Office des Radio Television du Benin), but there are five private TV stations including LC2, Golfe TV, Canal 3 and Tele Carrefour. A fifth station only recently began operation. It was gathered too that there are over 20 private radio stations including Golfe FM which broadcasts via satellite to several African countries.

Given the strategic importance of Cotonou port to Benin's economy, the security around the port's complex can only best be imagined. Saturday Sun's first trip to the neighbouring country was essentially to assess the risk. As Nigerians who live in Cotonou or regularly cross the border on business would tell you, the reputation of Beninois gendarmes was not built through acts of civility.

This reporter was told at the Seme border two years ago that in 2000, a Nigerian Immigration officer who was in Cotonou to make a brisk shopping, ended up in jail for seven months after the vehicle he was travelling in defied the whistle of the gendarmes to stop. Though he was not the driver, the gendarmes claimed in court that the Nigerian officer had called them names and indeed derided their country. Had this story not been told this reporter by another Immigration officer (names withheld) who indeed took turn to visit his colleague in Cotonou jail, the story would have been hard to swallow.

What the reporter would see in the course of the investigation rested any doubt about what the gendarmes were capable of. For example, on Monday, 7 November, about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, news reached Saturday Sun in Cotonou that over seven Nigerian traders had been arrested for offences muddled up in rapid-fire French. The gendarmes dragged them to their office. There the men were seperated from the women, stripped to their boxer shorts, made to sweep the premises and to pay CFA10,000 each to regain their freedom.

A section of the Nigerian community was alerted, but such an incidence was no news to them. As Nigerians cross to Benin Republic to eke out a living; some as cart pushers (this reporter actually saw some Nigerian load carriers around Air Gabon office), barbers, spare-parts dealers, prostitutes or internet fraudsters, the dignity of the Nigerian in Cotonou suffers a slump while xenophobia is on the rise.

As it turned out, the headquarters of the gendarmes was on a boulevard barely 400 meters from the port. A cluster of security units could be found here and there, along the stretch parallel to the port complex, from Avenue St. Michel to Hotel du Port which has on the opposite side, the Embassy of Cuba.

On the first visit, Saturday Sun was able to establish the necessary contacts who could assist him to penetrate the port and possibly ferret out shipping documents. Fees were discussed, but because the reporter's French was practically non-existent, the original idea of getting him to work inside the port was thrown overboard. Actually the story sold to the Beninois contacts was that the reporter was a University student doing a comparetive study on shipping in the West African sub-region. As it turned out, Beninois are great lovers of education and would go to great length to ally with any scholarly pursuit. In fact, their dedication to the assignment left the reporter wallowing in guilt.

After weighing the odds, the reporter's ‘friends' agreed to take him to a freight fowarder who will be able to fix a passe into the port. The custom agent turned out to be not only a woman but a Nigerian! Married to a Beninois, the woman and her husband (names witheld) have an office at the Cantine Port Douane. What they do are clearing and fowarding, transshipment and auxillary services. This woman also has some drivers (Beninois and Nigerians) working under her.

They are the ‘suicide drivers' whose job is to move convoys of second-hand vehicles at break-neck speed across the border from Cotonou to any address in Nigeria.

The woman's fee was higher. It was not clear whether she bought the university student story, but she didn't really care. She said the only way into the port was to get a paper as a consignor. She would be my agent but not for more than seven days. Money changed hands and this woman scribbled for the reporter some names and acronymns that he must as a matter of necessity commit to memory. The following week when the passe was prepared, in the name of a genuine consignor (names witheld), it was gathered that the document was actually manufactured in Nigeria, and thereafter couriered to Cotonou.

From the outside, the Cotonou port complex looks like the Berlin wall. There are two entrances into the port depending on where you are going to. Stationed outside each of the gates are about four different security agencies including the police, the port's security arm, of course the gendarmes and a unit from Direction de la prevention et de law protection civile (Civil Defence Directorate).

Saturday Sun gathered that the port was built in 1965 to handle 2 million tonnes of cargo per annum. Today the port exceeds 3.8 million tonnes due largely to Nigeria bound cargoes. To accommodate Nigerians, the Beninois government has began to build a second deepwater seaport off the coast of Seme-Kpodji. The French construction firm, Bouygues Group, is handing the job. The project, valued at 105 billion CFA France (US $160 million) will encompass among others, the construction of a 450 metre long quay, a 504 hectares storage area for containers, a second-hand vehicles fleet area of 7.7 hectare and a 3 hectares area for technical facilities.

Cantine Port Douane, where the clearing agent has her office, is a cluster of small offices and business centres next to buildings housing various governmental departments. Located adjacent to the ports perimeter wall, it buzzes with clearing agents, transit agents, aides, drivers waiting to be hired, telephone operators and currency changers.

It would appear all of these people had been trained to identify a Nigerian without the visitor as much as utter a word. Every day, they spill out of their offices to a nearby tree-lined street, from where they keep watch over the port's entrance and cautiously solicit new clients. Here too, one can find some Nigerian middlemen, mostly former clearing agents who, unable to find work anymore in Lagos, had joined in the exodus to Cotonou. Some actually had tagged along after their old clients moved their import businesses to Benin Republic. This category of Nigerians have devised ways to be getting a piece of the action. Essentially, they get a commission if they introduce a client to their Beninois counterpart. Still others bring in jobs from Nigeria, negotiate payments with the client and then hand over the papers to the Beninois who will do the job.

Notwithstanding the activities of this ilk of Nigerians, this reporter found the front premises of Port Douane (Entrance B) less boisterous than what it had been during his earlier window-shopping visits in 2001 and 2003. Then, the port had a section called Germanco that housed a used-car market. Outside the port's premises, a car accessory market had also sprung up. It was said that Nigerians, disappointed upon coming to Benin to find no ‘wharf rats', had tutored Beninois to make more profit by stripping imported second-hand vehicles of some of their accessories before selling them. The same accessories like car stereos, wheel cover, jacks, wheel spanners, mirros, fenders and etcetera were thereafter offered for sale to the car buyer at the gate. However, as the crowd built up, and again to make rooms for more containers inside, the Benin government transferred the used car business from land adjacent to the port to an area called Sekandji (outskirt of Cotonou) in an effort to ease traffic congestion.

Aside the names and acronyms earlier spelt out to be committed to memory, there was no further dress rehearsals before Saturday Sun walked through the gate into the port complex. The security men waved the ‘consignor' in with courtesy. The passe issued to the reporter ironically had come about to thwart unwholesome practices like cargo theft. The overwhelming success experienced by the port managers had attracted overwhelming challenges from fraudsters. Criminal elements believed to be Nigerians had began intercepting bills of lading, especially those sent through courier by individuals resident in Europe or Asia to their families. Once intercepted, such goods are cleared and sold off by thieves who smile away looking for another shipping document to intercept.

To contain this, the Cotonou port authorities have insisted that goods, other than those sent in by registered import-export companies, must have a copy of the international passport of the consignor (resident overseas) attached to the bill of lading. It is more beautiful when the consignor is physically present to clear his shipment. Saturday Sun was told that the clearing agent had used a ‘transplanted' passport to get the reporter the passe. Since the reporter's role in the port was merely that of an observer, nobody therefore used a microscope to see the slight differences in the documents used to obtain the passe and the originals used for the clearing.

Beginning from the very first office, as the reporter followed the agent and her assistants from one room to another, it began to get clear why the Cotonou port is considered among the best in the region in terms of the speed at which cargo is unloaded and cleared. So also did the incentives which make importation through Benin less harrowing. Indeed, the strategies developed by the Beninois to accelerate customs clearing process and to undercut well-laid down policies (if any) in Nigeria, is called "guichet unique".

As the process revealed, there is none of the arbitrariness, bribery and extortion that cast the port users in Nigeria as enemies. Saturday Sun surprisingly discovered that the process of clearing goods in Cotonou is as simple and straightfoward as a friendly handshake. While the process of clearing a mere 20 foot container in Nigeria could drive a well-meaning importer insane and indeed could take anything from 4 weeks to infinity, clearing process in Cotonou takes between 24 to 48 hours unless there is a complication like false declaration or financial constraints on the part of the importer.

The process begins with the presentation of the bill of lading (connaissment in French) by the clearing agent who must have received same from his client, the consignor. This is immediately run through the electronic manifest system for verification. Here, one would check if his consignment has arrived. Because the clearing agent was handling different papers for different imports from different clients at the same time, this reporter was able to follow the clearing of four different containers. Again, the fact that the consignments did not all arrive on the same day made the opportunity more ample.

With the bill of lading in her hand, the clearing agent already knew the shipping company to go to. In this case, it was Dom Trasco. Upon getting to this office, the bill of lading was handed over in addition to the agent's ID card, as well as the international passport of the importer which must correspond with the name on the bill of laden. Receipts of the goods being shipped were also tendered.

Once satisfied with their verification, the shipping company issued a paper called Exchange Bon-A-Delivery. Photocopies of this were made and sent to the port authority and SOBEMAP. In another case, the pre-shipment agent used was BIVAC (Bureau Inspection Veritace Academie Consiquency). Based on their certificate, the importer makes what is called a declaration at the customs desk.

Saturday Sun observed that typing the declaration is the most sensitive stage of clearing. Here, the woman paid meticulous attention to every word. The first container was a 40-foot container carrying four cars and personal effects while the second, a 20-foot container had two cars and personal effects. The importer was expected to declare not only the numbers of cars in a container but also the chasis number of each of the cars, the model and such other details. Each car must come with its log book.

For goods inside cartons like jewelry, electrical appliances, auto spare parts and etcetera, the importer also must list the number of cartons in a container, the number of bales of textile. The bales come in 25 kg and 50kg, so the importer must list the number of bales that are 25kg or 50kg.

If the textile is used clothing, the importer must state the quality: whether there are 1st grade or 2nd grade second-hand material. Also the type of textile is stated; be they lace, silk, brocade or jean. The inspection body fixes duties based on the type and quality of consignment. For this reason, if the importer has brought in biscuit, he must state whether it is sugar or salt biscuit because sugar biscuit is more expensive.

With the efficiency observed by this reporter, a false declaration can hardly go undetected at the Cotonou port. It is only with used tyres which are packed four in one that an importer can try to pull a fast one. Saturday Sun saw that with tyres, the inspectors can only do random checking, hardly able to check each and every one if they are packed in fours or more.

However, every importer knows that it is cheaper to make correct declarations. If a false declaration is discovered, the importer runs the risk of having the concealed items confisticated or face the costlier process of rectification.

To his surprise, Saturday Sun discovered that the customs is the only uniformed agency the importer has to contend with. There is no police interference in the inspection, no SSS, no NDLEA, SON, Quarantine and the likes. Though incidents of fake or substandard imports are almost unheard of, there is that country's equivalent of NAFDAC called, Direction de I'Alimentation et de la Nutrition Appliquee. Then there is the Direction des pharmacies that takes care of pharmaceutical products control. By some means not very obvious, these agencies vet the imports without necessarily coming in contact with the importer.

The first thing the customs sees is the inspection certificate issued by BIVAC. Essentially, the customs verifies whether the import had arrived on C.I.F (Cost, Insurance and Freight) or on F.O.B (Free on Board) in which case the importer pays at destination, the duty as well as the cost of freight.

Saturday Sun observed that at Cotonou Port, there are two types of bill of lading. One indicates shipment (consumassion) by indigenous importers while the other (transit) identifies imports by Nigerians or other nationals. S10 signifies Nigeria-bound goods; S12 is for Burkina Faso while S14 is for Niger Republic which in fact attracts the lowest tarrif. C is for goods meant for Cotonou while C6, also for Cotonou, is for rebate, especially goods imported by government departments.

As part of its shrewd drive for patronage, the Beninois offer rebate to the Nigerian importer. This means that apart from paying what is generally viewed as a healthy tariff system, the Nigerian importer is further pampered with about 15 percent tariff lesser than what is paid by his Beninois counterpart. However, to protect the Beninois market, the Nigerian importer must not sell his goods within the Benin territory; indeed, he has only three days to get his cargoes across the border.

Once the customs duties have been paid, the importer or his clearing agent is expected to wait for the Long Room number. The wait may take anything from two to three hours. When the number is issued, along with many others, the importer proceeds to a hall called Magazine 7. He is required to quote the Long Room number on every document thereafter.

The Cotonou Long Room is anything but long. Unlike the notorious Long Rooms of the Apapa and Tin Can Island Port that have given many importers the heart attack, that of the Cotonou port is not dreaded by anybody. Described as a nightmare by those unfortunate to have passed through any of them, the Nigeiran Long Room parades over 13 desks, each representing extortion, ‘settlement', arbitrary levies and unnecessary bottlenecks. Sadly, the Long Room job which is something two or three people could handle between two and three hours is manipulated to last between 10 and 25 days on the average.

The surprise of this reporter is better imagined when it was discovered that no importer is expected to stay more than 24 hours in the Cotonou Long Room. In fact, there is a penalty for delay. To speed up the clearing process, any importer found foot-dragging in the Long Room after 24 hours is fined CFA 50,000 before his document can advance to the next stage.

At Magasine 7, you have combined inspectors, including the Customs, the Ports Authority and SOBEMAP. Activities here are essentially to compare notes and to fish out any discrepancy. Satisfied with the final checks, photocopies of the documents are forwarded to the storage area so that your container can be identified and positioned for physical examination. The importer is expected to pay some fee depending on the weight of the container. Unlike in Nigeria, there is no hide-n-seek with forklift drivers, no offers of bribe or too many cargoes chasing just one forklift or crane.

Two representatives of the shipping company accompany the Customs, ports officials and SOBEMAP to open the containers for examination. Before the customs break open your container, the importer or his clearing agent must have hired and kept on standby trucks to evacuate his goods. For cars, the importer must have got his drivers ready. Since cars inside containers have their tyres removed before shipment, the tyres are fixed back. For other goods, the container is sealed again after inspection. The importer returns to Magazine 7. There he is given a release note and an escort for the final journey of the cargoes to the border. Finally, the customs issues an exit visa. As the goods travel towards the border, it is a serious offence to open a sealed container and attempt to sell its contents in Benin market.

Surprisingly, even when they would neither be used nor sold in Benin, the authorities there insist that transit vehicles to Nigeria must obtain insurance and registration number before they can be driven across the border. The Beninois police is strict in enforcing this. Saturday Sun observed that IP on the number plate is for Benin vehicles while VT signifies vehicles bound for Nigeria or Niger Republic.

Though the tour of the Cotonou port was punctuated by two days of public holiday, this reporter spent a total of seven working days inside the port, during which the clearing agent had cleared four different consignments. In Lagos, clearing one container alone, within that time, would have been considered a feat. In fact, for single-commodity imports like cars, it is possible to get the container out in one day if the process began early enough in the day.

Observations showed that part of the smooth and accelerated process of the Cotonou port is the custom's examination of cargoes at the stacks before they are moved to their designated bays. Also, the authorities regularly update its stock of plants and equipment. Saturday Sun saw over 14 Hyster and Terex cranes, six tow tractors, unspecified number of forklifts and spreaders among others.

Indeed, as Benin Republic grow fat at the expense of the Nigerian economy, the country's authorities are sparing no cost to keep the Nigerian importer happy while making Port Autonome the most business-friendly in the sub-region. In sharp contrast to Nigerian Ports, once described by a World Bank Group as "perhaps the most uncertain business environment in the world, the Cotonou Port is designed to encourage growth. For sure, there are no conspiracy and bottlenecks to entangle imports in demurrage.

In Cotonou, the demurrage begins to count seven days after the goods have been unloaded from the ship. It is seven days for vehicles and 14 days for textiles and other imports. For cars inside containers, it is CFA 3,000 demurrage per day and CFA 1,000 for vehicles not in a container. It is also CFA 3,000 for other goods inside containers. Demurrage doubles after every seven days and is so calculated until it equals or even gets higher than the cost of the goods; in which case the customs is at liberty to take over such goods.

Saturday Sun's investigations revealed that re-export, around which Benin Republic has hugely structured its economy, is actually a partially fraudulent activity. It is based on skirting the Nigerian protectionist policy and indeed target goods prohibited in Nigeria or those that are very highly taxed. Such goods are imported from Europe and Asia by import-export companies (most of them Nigerian) based in Cotonou. The companies are registered with the Benin Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

Among the items imported through the Cotonou Port are rice, wheat flour, textiles, second-hand clothing, second-hand cars and tyres, sugar, spirits, tomatoes (tinned and paste) second-hand fridges and air conditioning units, sorghum, vegetable oil and frozen chicken. Others are footwears, cosmetics, medical equipment, computer and telecommunication products. Though Nigeria slapped a ban on the overland import of a wide variety of goods from Benin, the list of items imported and trucked to the Nigerian border, just 50 kilometer to the east, has continued to increase. It is said that Cotonou handles some 350,000 second-hand vehicles imported from Europe into Nigeria every year. It was further learnt that re-export trade is different from transit trade. The latter makes sense and is for landlocked countries like Niger, Burkina Faso and Mali. With re-export, Nigeria, which has eight ports back home, is simply renting the services of the Cotonou Port.

Information made available to Saturday Sun revealed that re-export generated for the Benin economy 20 to 30 billion CFA Francs in customs revenue between 1995 and 1997, representing 14 per cent of total budget revenue. Customs revenue shot up from CFA 16.7 billion in 1994 to CFA 31.7 billion in 1997.

Tracing the origin of re-export, Saturday Sun gathered that the practice dates back to the end of the 1960's during the Nigerian Civil War. Through this channel, considerable goods were said to have been smuggled to the Biafran side.

In the past years, the dynamism of this trade has been greatly modified. The import-export companies conduct their exchange operations and obtain letter of credit from Cotonou banks.

The Nigerian importer does not only pay the Beninois custom duties, he rents stores, warehouses on Benin border towns, buys from parallel exchange markets and of course engages the services of transshipment agents who are actually glorified smugglers.

In what would amount to a double tragedy, goods imported by Beninois and sold in their markets are snapped up by Nigerian wholesalers and retailers. This category also smuggle their wares through every possible mode and sell them in Nigerian markets.

Beleaquered back home by ambiquous government policies and an enduring regime of bribery, corruption, extortion, multiple levies and harassment by a plethora of security agents, more and more Nigerian importers find justification to join the exodus to Cotonou where the Beninois are only to happy to receive them.

Indeed, the footprints of Nigerian importers in Cotonou are not only evident in the swashbuckling at the Cotonou Port but by the VIP treatment accorded them by the country's bank chiefs and hoteliers. An enquiry by Saturday Sun revealed that as new banks spring up to accommodate Benin's fast growing economy, banks like Carrefour des trios Banques, Banque International Du Benin, ECO Bank, Societe Generale des Banques du Benin and Banque Africaine pour le Development et le commerce have designed special packages to woo Nigerian businessmen who are more often treated like sheikhs. Similarly, hotels like Hotel du Port, Hotel le 15 Janvier, Le Littorial Motel, Hotel Miva and Hotel de Nations all reek of Nigerians and Lebanese.

Saturday Sun gathered that it is not only importers that are avoiding Nigerian Ports. High shipping and clearing costs and the general poor infrastructure have resulted in some shipowners preferring to carry Nigeria-bound cargo to the more efficient port of Cotonou from where they are transshipped in leaky vessels to Nigeria.

Bureaucratic bottleneck has not only caused expensive delays for ships, a lack of adequate facilities in the ports has forced shipping companies to acquire their own landing and loading gear, thus increasing shipping cost. The dangerous dimension is better told by the news this week that due to poor facilities, the last time a ship berth at Port Harcourt Port was two years ago.

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