The Nigeria Customs Service, Apapa Area1 Customs Command, has made a bold statement with it’s Q1 activities as presented to Journalists at press a briefing by the Area Controller, Compt. Yusuf Malanta Ibrahim in Apapa recently.
The Apapa Command made a bold statement with Two hundred and sixty -four billion, five hundred and thirty-six million, two hundred and one thousand and ninety- three naira, seventy -one Kobo (N264,536,201,293.71) collected.
This, as was presented by Compt. Malanta, shows a leap of N104 billion as against N159 billion collected within the corresponding period of January to March last year (2021), this represents a 65.7 percent increase in revenue collection. This feat the CAC said was made possible by the creativity of his officers who leveraged on IT with a much needed corporation from Stakeholders.
The Command Apapa Area 1 also witnessed an upward swing in its Anti smuggling operations, with 46 seizures of various items with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of One billion, One hundred and forty-two million, eight hundred and Seventy -six thousand, six hundred and six Naira (N1,142,876,606.00), as against 28 seizures made in corresponding Months of year 2021.
The seizure are: unregistered medicaments such as tramadol, codine syrup, unprocessed wood, Used clothing, footwear, foreign parboiled rice and sundry items under the prohibition list in clear contravention of sections 46 and 47 of Customs and Excise Management Act, CEMA CAP C45 LFN 2004. The Command reiterated it’s readiness to continue it’s drive towards trade facilitation but warned that it will not relent on clamping down on those whose business thrive on contravention known trade laws.
The Command did not also relent in the area of encouraging the diversification of the Nigerian economy through non -oil Export. As the statement showed that various items such as: Agricultural goods, Mineral resources, Steel and others were exported through the premiere port. Statistics however reveales that goods worth thirty-four billion, Seventy – two million, eight hundred and Sixty -nine thousand, seven hundred and ninety- nine naira (N34,072,869,799.00), with FOB value of $87.992,356.10 million USD were exported showing an improvement when compared with the N30.2 billion which is equivalent to FOB value of $82.1 million US dollars between the Months of January and March 2021.
Compt. Malanta has also made it clear that in spite of revenue collection and facilitation of trade, the Command will not relent to hunt down those that are bent on circumventing and twisting extant laws to dupe the government of revenues.
