The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said it generated N1.341 trillion as revenue for the year 2019, exceeding the target of N937 billion by N404bn revenue.
The 2019 revenue generation milestone also exceeded the N1.202tr generated in 2018 by N139.2bn, Customs said in a statement issued by the Public Relations Officer, Deputy Comptroller Joseph Attah.
Commenting on the feat, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col, Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd), described it as a result of resolute pursuit of what is right rather than being populist by compromising national interest on the altar of individual or group interests.
He said the service revenue generation profile had continued to be on the rise annually as the ongoing reforms in the Service insists on strategic policies.
Ali said those policies includes the strategic deployment of officers strictly using the standard operating procedure, strict enforcement of extant guidelines by the tariff and trade department, and the automation of the Customs process thereby, eliminating vices associated with the manual process.
The others are; robust stakeholder sensitization, resulting in more informed/voluntary compliance, increased disposition of officers and men to put national interest above selves.
Meanwhile Ali said the partial border closure, which has forced cargoes that could have been smuggled through the porous borders to come through the sea and airports, raised revenue collection from ports.
“Before the commencement of the border drill on 20th August 2019, revenue generation was between N4bn to N5bn but now NCS generates between N5bn to N7bn daily.
“The partial border closure is a decisive action against the challenging issue of trans-border crime and criminalities, fueled by the noncompliance to ECOWAS Protocol on transit of goods by neigbhouring countries,” he noted in the statement.
