The Kwara Area Command of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has generated over N3.5 billion revenue between January and March 2023.
The new Customs Area Comptroller for Kwara Command, Mr Kehinde Ilesanmi, disclosed this while briefing newsmen on activities of the command in the first quarter of 2023 in Ilorin on Wednesday.
According to him, a comparative analysis with the preceding year 2022 indicates that we have surpassed revenue collected same period last year with N779, 992,680.64.
The Area Comptroller said the command made 23 seizures of different items during the period under review, including 451 bags of foreign rice of 50kg each.
The seizures made by men of the Command included 873 kegs of petroleum product of 25 litres each which is about 21,825 litres of PMS, six units of used vehicles, 23 bales of secondhand clothing, and one motorcycle used in conveying petroleum, he said.
Ilesanmi added that the cumulative Duty Paid Value (DPV) for all the above seizures is N34,797,020.00.
“This surpasses the Duty Paid Value (DPV) of seizures made in the first quarter of last year 2022 with N25,628,520.00,’’ he said.
He disclosed that in line with the extant laws and Standard Operational Procedure (SOP), most of the inflammable products have been auctioned to the members of the public.
He added that the amount generated as fees has been remitted into government coffers.
The area comptroller warned smugglers and would-be smugglers to keep away from the length and breadth of Kwara Command or be ready to face the full wrath of the law.
He said further that the leadership of Nigeria Customs Service under the Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.), remained unrelenting to foil, frustrate and deplete the activities of economic saboteurs.
In line with this, Ilesanmi said the Kwara command through its renewed strategies has continued to achieve increased blockage of revenue leakages and preventing the smuggling of prohibited imported items.
“The Command under my leadership will not negotiate the CGC’s zero tolerance to acts of economic sabotage.
“Smuggling in whatever form is an act of economic sabotage and the command will ensure that it pursues smugglers to their trenches,” Ilesanmi warned.
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