By Steve Agbota
Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Port Harcourt Area ll Command Onne Port, has raked in about N115.264 billion between January and June 2022 even as it intercepted military wears, machetes without end user certificate, among others.
The 2022 half year collection showed a remarkable difference from the N78 billion collected in the first half of 2021 and N46.6 billion same period in 2020 by the command.
Further comparison indicates 147 per cent increase above the 2020 collection and 47 per cent increase above the 2021 figure, showing the differences of
N37,097,079,630 and N68,597,503,002 for 2021 and 2020 respectively.
The Command’s revenue collection, according to its Comptroller, Auwal Mohammed, showed an upward progression on monthly basis resulting in the cumulative differences recorded for the three years juxtaposed.
Mohammed said in the first half of 2022, the Command made 28 seizures comprising nine containers valued at N531,386,166(Duty Paid Value).
He said the half year seizures was higher than the 20 seizures made between corresponding period of January and June 2021.
Mohammed said among the seized items were machetes brought into the country without end user certificate, military wears, vegetable oil, whisky, soap and used clothings.
He said others seizures recorded include used tyres, foreign parboiled rice, tomato paste, used vehicle parts and other items either classified as prohibited or for which duty payment were being evaded.
On export, he said a total of 876,775.60 metric tonnes with $495,384,221 free on board (FOB) value translating into N203,969,499,562 and Nigeria Export Supervision Scheme (NESS) value of N1, 075,060,914 were processed through the command in the period under review.
He urged officers of the Command to brace up to better performance in the second half of the year.
“This revenue, seizure and export figures coming at the end of first half of the year assets to a good outcome from our efforts. While thanking my officers and men for sticking to the vision of the Comptroller General of Customs,Col. Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd.) and implementing the service mandate without compromise, I want to thank our compliant traders.
“Like I have always said in our parades with officers and meetings with stakeholders, there are numerous advantages attached to being compliant. It saves one, raises profit of traders by helping to prevent payment of demand notices and penalty payments by persons trying to cut corners and raises the integrity level of the port user in our profiling system for fast track plus other benefits.
“Compliant traders are our partners in progress. Indeed, we as a service in this Command will continue to lawfully support them.”