Nigerian Flight Deck Travel and Business Reportage
THE Apapa command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), has disclosed that it has realised the sum of $5.505 million from the export of commodities in 10 weeks also and has contributed N60bn into the Federation account.
Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs (ACG), the out-going Area Controller Apapa Area Command, Bashar Abubakar, disclosed this in Lagos during the handover exercise to the new Area Controller, Mohammed Abba-Kura.
The Customs boss noted that despite the lack of business activity due to the just concluded general elections, the command recorded N60bn as revenue generated from imports including N763m on export within January and February, 2019.
He also the command intercepted 24 containers of tomato paste as well as vegetable oil valued at N200.8 million.
According to him, the contrabands were seized between January 1 and March 14 this year.
He appealed to officers and men of the command to give the new controller all the support and collaboration needed to keep the command in its position as the flagship command.
“To the officers and men of the Apapa Area Command, you are the best team ever. I plead that you put into practice all our resolutions and build on the successes already achieved by the command.”
Responding, Comptroller Abba-Kura promised to sustain the tempo of revenue generation and anti-smuggling drive at the Command.
Abba-Kura also charged importers and agents to increase their level of compliance to trade regulations to fast track the processing of their documents.
“I am going to build on the foundation already laid by my predecessor. I know officers of the command have tried very well with the achievement you have recorded but there is need for more improvement by tightening your belt. You should brace up for more hard work. This is going to be the beginning of hard work, so be prepared.”
“To the stakeholders, I want to urge them to be compliant. As long as they carry out their transactions according to the rules and regulations, they will not have any problem. If you have any declaration, make honest declaration of all the content you have in your container, then there will be no issue and that would facilitate trade. But as long as they are not making honest declaration, then they will have issues,” he said.
