The Seme international land border which links other West African countries, noted for its busy nature in vehicular and human traffic is for the first time witnessing a situation where the economic activities through the busiest corridor is considered to be at its lowest ebb.
This recent development is of utmost concern to the Nigeria Customs Service as the scenario has had negative impact in the revenue drive of the command.
It will be recalled that the slow pace of economic activities commenced in the month of March 2017 after exhausting the back log of uncleared goods at the Atlas Park since December, 2016.
The downward trend in economic activities in the month of March, 2017 resulted to very low revenue figure generated by the command as it recorded a total of Four hundred and seventy-four million, five hundred and twenty-seven thousand and seventy-one Naira, twenty-nine kobo) (N474, 527,071.29).
The Command also made sixty two (62) seizures with a duty paid value (DPV) of Twenty-five million, seven hundred and forty-eight thousand, two hundred and sixty-four Naira (N25, 748,264.00) for the period under review.
Disturbed by the development in the command’s revenue, the Command Public Relation unit which embarked on a fact finding visit to the Atlas Park and the critical stakeholders to ascertain the possible cause discovered an empty park with some broken down/ empty trucks.
The sighted empty park indicated that there were no importations through the land border as at the time of the visit.
Reacting to the development, the Chairman, Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANCLA) Seme Chapter, Alhaji Lasisi Fanu attributed the low level of economic activities to the upward review of the benchmark by the service with over one hundred and fifty percent (150%) increment which he said was not favorable to importers
Fanu also said that the annual China breaks that usually take place between January and February each could also be a contributory factor to the low and dwindling revenue bedeviling the command as well as the current economic recession occasioned by high exchange rate which affected importation of general goods.
The ANCLA Chairman further disclosed that the situation did not only affect the revenue drive of the command but the entire association rendering most of their members redundant.
However, the Customs Area Controller, Comptroller Mohammed Aliyu in an attempt to redeem the revenue profile of the command is engaging the critical stakeholders in series of mutual consultations on the way forward and also proffer solutions to get out of the ugly trend as the Comptroller has also warned that all Units at the point of entry or exit must be seen to be facilitating legitimate trade across the frontier.
He cautioned that officers’ conducts that were found to be inimical to the ideals of the service would be made to face the full wrath of the law.
He concluded that officers must be professional in the performance of their core functions and must equally create a conducive and enabling working environment to ease business transaction among stakeholders at the border.
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