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By Ebube Egbufor
The Area II command of the Nigeria Customs Service at Onne Port, in Rivers State, has achieved a record breaking collection of N188,643,692,057, from January to December 2021, surpassing the 2020 collection with N69 billion.
According to a press statement made available to journalists by the public relations officer, Mrs. Ifeoma Onuigbo Ojekwu, the area controller (CAC) of the command, Comptroller Auwal Mohammed, who announced the figures at the close of work on Friday, December 31, 2021 described the collection as the highest in the history of the command.
Comptroller Mohammed said the 2021 total is N69,684,478,058 above the 2020 total of N118,959,215,999.
The CAC also revealed that 34 seizures were made on enforcement and anti-smuggling activities last year, which according to him, had a total duty paid value of N11,983,429,216, adding that prominent among the seizures were 1,387 cartons of Tramadol falsely declared to evade detection.
Other seizures include rice, engine parts, vegetable oil and other items “concealed with intent by defiant agents and importers to evade accurate duty payments.”
On export, within the period under review, the command processed 1,083,846 metric tonnes of cargo with total Free On Board (FOB) value of $402,367,568, while the Nigerian Export Supervision Scheme (NESS) value of the total export is N764,462,724.
Commending the officers of the command for “their relentless commitment to ensuring facilitation of legitimate trade and preventing smuggling of any form,” Comptroller Mohammed urged them to intensify efforts in carrying out all NCS functions in the command in 2022.
He advised them to brace up to modern technology as the procured scanners will be deployed for use soon so as to ensure faster cargo clearance and easier detection of concealments, thereby facilitating trade, adding that the command would continue to build on achieved successes recorded through Customs community relations effort.
The CAC, in an end of the year interaction with senior officers, said “I commend you all for the feats we have jointly achieved in revenue collection, enforcement and trade facilitation. They are indeed laudable milestones that we must not only sustain but also improve upon for the benefit of our country’s economy and national security.
“Indeed, our various meetings with stakeholders and port users paid off in 2021 because we have noted remarkable improvements in compliance levels. As we enter 2022, let us continue to blend our enforcement capability with intelligence, to always detect all attempts at circumventing the law through false declarations, under declarations and concealments”.
He warned that in 2022, “whoever attempts doing the wrong thing, like smuggling through Onne Port, would not only get his cargo seized but would risk facing arrest for prosecution in accordance with the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA).
“We cannot afford to compromise our positions or disappoint on the trust reposed on us”, he said and advised importers and agents using the Customs Area II Command Onne for their businesses to stay on the part of compliance at all times.
