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From Uche Usim, Abuja
The Federal Government has commenced a pilot phase of the National Vehicle Registry (VREG) policy at the Nigeria Customs Service, Kirikiri Lighter Terminal in Lagos, in a deft move to tackle terrorism, kidnapping, smuggling and other crimes aided by vehicles.
Speaking at a sensitisation workshop on VREG in Abuja, yesterday, Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed, said the new initiative also aims at plugging revenue leakages via Customs duty evasion.
She revealed that the ministry convened the nation-wide seminar to educate Nigerians on vehicle registration processes and vehicle transfer processes.
According to her, the National Bureau of Statistics confirmed that between 2015 to 2019, Nigeria imported an average of 300,000 vehicles with an average of 48 percent increase in import annually.
“An additional 45 percent of the vehicles are smuggled into the country annually, thus evading duty payment of which 40 percent of these vehicles are stolen vehicles. A case study also revealed that between October 2018 to September 2019, the country recorded over N1.8 trillion value of used vehicle importation.
“It is further revealed that Nigeria is the hub of stolen vehicles as Vehicle Identification Number (VIN) of vehicles in the country are usually unregistered, consequently, vehicles within the shores of Nigeria cannot be traced.
