‘Customs raked in N3.75 bn last year’

Category: News Published on Friday, 01 February 2013 05:00 Written by Eyo Charles, Calabar

Comptroller of Nigeria Customs Service, Cross River/CTFZ/Akwa Ibom States Area Command, Mr Alamina Legg-Jack, said yesterday that they realised N3.75 billion as revenue last year.

Addressing newsmen in Calabar, when members of the House of Representative committee on customs and exercise visited him, Legg-Jack said the revenue bases for the command include the Calabar Port, National Inland Waterways, Calabar Free Trade Zone, Tinapa Trade Zone and Champion Brewery at Uyo.

He said due to the strict patrol measures employed by the area command across the different beaches in Calabar, a lot of seizures were made in the past three months.

He said for instance, a total of 340 bags of rice, 140 bales of second hand clothing, 400 pairs of canvas shoes and 384 tin of baby food, 1080 packets of Maggie cubes; and 400 pieces of used pneumatic tyres were intercepted.

Leader of the House committee inspection team, Mr. Kingsley Chinda, said there was need for the comptroller to officially file a report on why the scanner at the Calabar Port had not been functioning optimally.

Earlier, the General Manager, Site Operations, Global Scan systems Limited, Mr. Hassan Adeogun, said the HCV mobile scanner which was installed for scanning of containers since December 2007, has only scanned five trucks.

Adeogun attributed the lack of use of the scanner to low volume of trade at the port, adding that the depth of the water in Calabar was not the real reason why ships were not coming in.

According to him, it was because of the unavailability of cargoes, among other reasons.

``In the past seven years that we have operated in Calabar, only 2059 risk assessment reports were issued. We held series of seminars in Calabar, Aba and Onitsha to enlighten stakeholders on the destination inspection scheme,” he said.