By Samson Echenim
The Nigeria Customs Service, Apapa Area Command, has released its revenue report for 2019, indicating the command surpassed the year’s revenue target N372 billion by 11 percent, having generated N413.7 billion at Nigeria’s premiere seaport, Apapa Port.
Mohammed Abba-Kura, controller of the command, while addressing a press conference at the command’s headquarters in Apapa, said the command raked in N413.7 billion in the federal government coffers from January to December, 19, 2019.
According to him, the N413.7 billion collected within the period under review translated to about 111 percent of the 2019 annual revenue target.
He said, “In achieving this feat, the complementary roles of Customs Intelligence Unit, Valuation and other units must be specially acknowledged. It is worthy to note that the command had the highest revenue collection of N42.7 billion in the month of October this year.The revenue collected so far in 2019, is already higher than that of 2018 with N9.7 billion.”
Abba-Kura, a comptroller of Customs, also hinted that his command recorded seizures of smuggled and contraband goods which have duty paid value of N12.8 million.
Giving details on the anti-smuggling operations of the command, he stressed, “within this same period, we seized a total of 112 containers of various items that flouted import procedures. Notable among them were pharmaceutical products, which include tramadol imported without approval from NAFDAC. Others were foot wears, foreign rice and armored glasses.
“The duty paid value (DPV), for these seizures is N12.8 billion.”
The souls of our ancestors will now rest in peace!