Seme Customs Command Raked In N8.5bn Last Year – Comptroller

The revenue earned by the command is the highest collected in one month in the last three years.

The Comptroller, Willy Egbudin, who made this known while disclosing the command’s performance indices to journalists at his office at Seme, said the command surpassed its December target by N162 million, indicating about 14.5 per cent improvement on its target for the month.

He said the command had also seized 17 vehicles since he took over the command’s leadership in November last year, adding that the vehicles had a duty paid value (DPV) of N6.1 million.

“My management team and I have been brainstorming to identify and block all perceived sources of revenue leakages and discussion is on-going with our Beninoise counterpart to address the problem of appropriate transit of imported vehicles from the Republic of Benin to Nigeria”, Egbudin said.

Other seized items from December last year include 4,663 bags of rice with a DPV of N45.4 million; 7,090 cartons of frozen poultry products with a DPV of N63.7 million; 14 seizures of general cargoes, two seizures of textile and 81 numbers of 25kg vegetable oil with DPVs of N2.8 million, N1.5 million and N3.8 million respectively.

“Our command is purely an enforcement zone but we have to collect revenue for government, facilitate trade and secure the border.  We may not expect that much in January, but we have decided that it will not be less than N1 billion”, the Seme Customs boss said.

He added that “A lot of vehicles come through this axis, so, we have made plans to ensure that duties are paid on all vehicles”.

Comptroller Egbudin explained that he was using dialogue, community involvement and intelligence to counter smuggling at the border, rather than use of fire arms, which led to several casualties in 2013 before he took over leadership of the command.