Zika Bobby
The Nigeria Customs Service, Area II Command Onne Port, said it made a total revenue collection of N22,950,780,163.43 between January and March 2020 with seizures of seven containers worth total Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N215,387,201.18.
The Command also recorded 1,053,531 metric tonnes with Free on Board (FOB) value of $87,136,233.66 and total Nigeria Export Supervision Scheme (NESS) value of N132,399,525.56 respectively, on exports in the first quarter of 2020.
Customs Area Controller of the Command, Aliyu Galadima Saidu, who gave a breakdown of the revenue figures, seizures and export statistics, said N7,651,099,364.62K was generated in January; N7,589,349,555.61K in February and N7,701,331,243.20K in March 2020.
In the same vein, the seven seizures of containers comprised 1,225 bales of used clothing, 35 sacks of used shoes, 86 bales of used hand bags and other miscellaneous goods such as foreign detergent, lightings, foreign parboiled rice, perfume, body spray and others, all valued at N215,387,201.18
The above seized items, according to Saidu, were brought into the country in contravention of the Customs and Excise Management Act and extant import prohibition list.
For the NESS Fee which is a statutory payment to the Federal Government on all legitimate goods exported from the country, 377,985 metric tonnes were processed through the port in January; 455,987 metric tonnes in February and 219,559 metric tonnes in March.
The Area Controller lauded officers and men of the command for their resilience, commitment and diligence to work in the face of the Corona virus pandemic, while urging them to keep safe and remain uncompromising.
“Let us continue to be health and safety conscious this period and beyond, while shunning any attempts at making us compromise on our duties of revenue collection, trade facilitation and suppression of smuggling “Our stakeholders are advised to utilise all Customs modernisation options available to them to reduce human contacts as much as possible while conducting businesses in the ports.
“The Controller General of Customs is not unaware of our efforts to serve the country and maintain full presence at our duty posts, as directed, this period. I urge you all to keep it up. “Like I have always said, compliance is very vital to trade facilitation. All importers and agents are once again enjoined to be compliant by making sincere and accurate declarations, avoid concealment, under value and smuggling under any guise.