Oluyinka Onigbinde
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Apapa command on Thursday, said it collected N790billion between January to September, 2022.
Addressing newsmen, the Customs Area Controller (CAC), Apapa command, Compt. Yusuf Malanta, said the command improved its revenue collection profile by 29.8 percent, up from the N609billion collected in the same period in 2021.
He added that the command also intercepted contraband such as codeine, tramadol, unprocessed woods worth N12.4billion in the period under review.
According to him, “in the period under review, the command has collected revenue to the tune of N790.6billion. This showed an exponential improvement of N181.5 billion as against N609 billion naira collected in the corresponding months of the year 2021.
“The 2022 collection represents a 29.8 percent increase. This remarkable achievement was made possible because of our officers’ tireless commitment to ensure that all revenue leakages are being mitigated, as well as, sustaining the level of compliance by the importers/stakeholders in the clearance value chain.”
Yusuf, while speaking on the anti-smuggling drive of the command said, “anti-smuggling activities has been one of the command’s focal points, especially with the activities of some unrepentant traders who are always looking for avenues to undermine our system.
“The command has fortified its forensic manifest management to monitor and detect fraudulent transactions through audit trials to ensure that illicit trade are being tracked before the declarations are lodged.
“Furthermore, the enforcement unit has been reinforced through improved collaboration and sharing of credible intelligence with relevant government agencies to suppress smuggling activities to its barest minimum.
“For the period under review, the command recorded 145 seizures of various items with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N12.4bn.”
The CAC however, warned importers to be compliant, saying non-compliant traders will continue to face the full wrath of the law.
“These seized items include unregistered medicaments such as tramadol and codeine, processed, unprocessed wood, used clothing, ladies, men’s footwear, foreign parboiled rice, tomato paste, vegetable oil and other sundry items that fall under import, export prohibition list.
“Apapa Command is continuously ready to assist in facilitating legitimate trade and ensure that all forms of smuggling activities through false declaration on import/export done in defiance to extant trade guidelines will be detected through our layers of control mechanism, however, I want to crave the indulgence of our esteemed stakeholders to join hands with the command and ensure that items that are on the import/export prohibition list are strictly adhered to, and urge them to embrace the emerging realities of customs examination through non-intrusive inspection (NII) regime.
“The non-intrusive inspection regime is geared towards increasing the volume of cargo inspection, protection of national security, saving cost/clearing time, storing reliable data and images for reference purposes, and reducing human contact in the examination of containerized cargo.”
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“It helps in reducing human contact in the examination of containerised cargo,” he said.
On the installed scanners, he said that the command had resolved the issue of how many containers shipping companies would bring per day having requested for at least 150 containers but shipping companies agreed on 100 containers.
“For the suspect one, we promised to do recheck of 30 containers per day and it was accepted and subject to improvement as the system is being fine-tuned.
“Initially, we were having a downtime of about 30 minutes gap for bringing containers to scanning area and back to the stacking area but now we have 15 minutes downtime.
“For the backlog, we work Saturday and Sunday to clear it before next week starts,” he said.
Yusuf appreciated the government agencies in the port for collaboration and synergy.
He also commended officers and men of Apapa Command for their determined resilience, and their compliant stakeholders for support.
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