The Murtala Muhammed Airport (MMA) Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated N90.43 billion last year from customs duty and other charges.
The Area Controller, Comptroller Muhammad Yusuf, at a press conference yesterday in Lagos, added that the command had been given N144 billion as target for this year.
Yusuf noted that in comparison to the revenue collected in same period in 2022 was N69.77 billion.
“This clearly shows a progressive difference of N20.66 billion, depicting 29.61 per cent increase of collection.
“The difference recorded was made possible as a result of resilience of officers in ensuring that agents were made to do proper declarations and made to adhere strictly to import/export guidelines in tandem with extant laws,’’ he said.
He said to achieve this year’s target, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, had urged their officers to sit up and block leakages and that this could be done with technology.
He added that during the period under review, anti-smuggling, officers and men of the command had not rested on their oars in enforcing government fiscal policies and other trade guidelines.
The customs boss said the command made a total of 10 seizures and the items include tramadol, military camouflage jackets, military hard wares, counterfeit medicaments, dried shark fins and dried donkey genitals.
“These items with the cumulative Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N47.21 billion were seized mainly because of various forms of infractions. The infractions range from false declarations, non-compliancy with the estimated threshold and failure to comply with other extant regulations as enshrined in the Nigeria Customs Service Act (NCS ACT),’’ he said.
He pointed out that most of the relevant items had been handed over to sister agencies in the spirit of inter-agency collaboration.
He said the command had maintained an open-door policy and resolved a lot of issues of common interest with concerned stakeholders.
He appreciated the commands critical stakeholders, sister agencies and the media for their collaboration.
“I want to appreciate the CGC and his management team for opportunity to perform and urge officers and men of the command to remain focus and steadfast in discharging their assigned responsibilities,” he added.
