… Challenges defrauded importers to come up with proof
The Tincan Island Port command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has said that attributing its revenue records to extortion is a flagrant display of ignorance geared towards decimating the enviable records of the Customs Area Controller, Comptroller Adekunle Oloyede who has clearly demonstrated capacity and panache in administration.
The Customs Public Relations Officer of the command, Mr. Uche Ejesieme who stated this in a statement made available to Primetime Reporters Wednesday morning was reacting to a report by this medium where it quoted some stakeholders as accusing the command of defrauding importers to arrive at the humongous revenue profile it showcased in the half year 2022 report it released to newsmen last week.
Stakeholders had alleged that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) was fraudulent in its collection of duties from importers and freight forwarders.
The aggrieved stakeholders made this allegation in a swift reaction to the Tincan Island Port Customs command’s half year report of N274,320,715,179.22 revenue translating to 27.50 per cent increase from last year’s collection of N229,321,865,091.16 within the period under review.
Customs Area Controller, Tincan Island Port Customs command, Adekunle Oloyede, while delivering the report stated that the VIN-valuation has helped the command to achieve an expedited clearance process due to predictability of value-assessment, increase in revenue generation, improved ease of doing business, generation of accurate statistics for the federal government and a host of others.
He explained that VIN-Valuation was deployed in March 2022 by the service which uses information obtained through artificial intelligence to assign values to an imported vehicle based on its unique identification number otherwise known as the chassis number.
However, reacting to the report, former Chairman of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Murtala Mohammed International Airport chapter, Dr. Segun Musa said that increment or reduction in revenue collected by NCS was not an achievement alleging that 50 per cent of that revenue was fraudulently collected from importers through coercive measures.
According to him, what amounts to an achievement is the increase in their operational system; how they were able to enhance trade facilitation and ease of doing business at all border corridors.
Reacting, Ejesieme stated that whoever gave this information to this reporter was either being biased, mischievous or completely ignorant of the leadership style of Comptroller Adekunle Oloyede.
While pointing out that revenue collection was number three on the command’s order of priority, Ejesieme added that the major focus of the Customs Area Controller of the command was trade facilitation which according to him, ultimately led to higher turnover insisting that the command had removed all known bottlenecks to free flow of trade as this could be empirically verified particularly through compliant traders.
On revenue, he said, “If you look at our revenue chat, you will see that revenue from vehicles as being callously opined by the agent is less than 1% of the total revenue. Go and verify! Our major source is bulk cargo from multinational organizations and corporate companies who are mostly compliant traders.
“And so, attributing our revenue to extortion is a flagrant display of ignorance geared towards decimating the enviable records of the Customs Area Controller who has clearly demonstrated capacity and panache in administration.
“The source ought to have applauded the giant strides of the CAC as against attributing to VIN Valuation which contribution is quite infinitesimal. For your information, no importer has been defrauded in any way as being insinuated and if there is any proof of such, I challenge the person making such claims to come up with the specific issue and I can assure you that necessary steps will be initiated to ensure refunds because refunds and drawbacks are part of our extant laws.”
Photo: Comptroller Adekunle Oloyede, Customs Area Controller, Tincan Island Port Command.
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