Despite Challenges, Customs Seme Border Command Collects 963,700,596.85 In March

The Seme Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service said that, it collected N963,700,596.85 in March 2016. The command also made six seizures with a duty paid value of N115,184,600.58 and arrested three suspects in the same month. Confirming the revenue collection, seizures and arrests in a statement, the command’s Public Relations Officer (PRO); Mr Taupyen, SK, stressed that, the achievements were recorded in March despite the challenges faced by the command. “Despite the numerous interruptions in the month of March that hampered the effective collection of maximum revenue in Seme border, the command was able to collect over 94% of its revenue for the month of target”, he stated. According to him, despite the various hiccups, the revenue collected exceeded the N 773,841,890.38 collected in the corresponding Month in 2015, by with over N189, 858,706.47. Giving an insight into the challenges, he explained that, “it is pertinent to note that despite some fundamental factors that lowered economic activities at the Lagos Abidjan corridor like the two rounds of presidential elections that took place (5th and 19th March) in the Republic of Benin, the security alert over the possible invasion of armed robbers into the banks and the border community which made banks to be on half day work for a week, and the attempt by the dare devil armed robbery gang that was repelled by the joint border security forces through the waterways”. He added that, “the two working days (25th & 28th) declared as Easter public holidays, the high exchange rate occasioned by the rejection of the Naira in certain quarters and the sorry and deplorable state of the Lagos -Seme road”, also contributed. On the command’s performance, he quoted the Customs Area Controller (CAC); Comptroller Victor Dimka as saying that, “as a command, we are committed and determined to succeed and leave above board at all times, even when we have daunting challenges that have negative influence on our mandate of revenue generation”. “We have no option than to accept such unexpected eventuality as natural phenomenon”, the Comptroller said, even as he reiterated that “our relentless quest to succeed in actualizing our monthly revenue target makes every challenge surmountable to us as a command. “ The Comptroller also encouraged his management team to work assiduously more than before, considering the re-introduction of restriction order on the importation of rice through land borders across the country by the service. The Customs Area Controller however sounded a word of caution to all border patrol officers, emphasizing that there is zero-tolerance to smuggling of imported rice through the land borders; hence the need for aggressive patrol of all flanks and crannies of suspected openings to suppress smuggling of the product to the barest minimum cannot be over emphasized.