Customs
“Don’t take my friendly disposition for weakness” Adeniyi, CGC, bares his fangs as he charges officers to brace up and ready to account for their actions.
Funso Olojo
Adewale Adeniyi, the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, has sent a strong message to men and officers of the agency, bonded terminal operators, terminal operators, shipping companies, importers and their agents that it was not going to be business as usual under his leadership.
He warned that his benign and smiling face should not be misconstrued as a weakness as he was going to trace and track down all the merchants of death and their collaborators who were bringing in arms and ammunition and other illicit items into the country.
Adeniyi, who was on a visit to the Apapa command of the service on Thursday, July 4th, 2023, was speaking to the officers of the command about the need to be security conscious, remain vigilant and abide by the tenets of their oath they swore not to be compromised in the course of their duties.
The CGC was speaking against the backdrop of the recent avalanche of seizures of arms and ammunition at Tin Can, Onne ports and lately, Lagos Airport which has become a source of concern to the the management of customs.
Devoid of his trademark smiles and friendly banters, and in a resonating voice, Adeniyi kept his men and officers spellbound as he admonished them on the need to be professionally upright in their duties and be ready to be accountable for their actions.
“Since the beginning of this year, I am sure you must have known or heard about a customs officer or his family that was kidnapped.
“I am sure you must have heard or known a colleague or a family member of a customs officer that has been a victim of a terrorist attack, either in the North East, in the North West, or in the South”.
“So customs officers are not isolated from what is happening in the rest of the country.
” I just wanted to use those instances to draw your attention to the fact that we live in a very, very dire situation in the country”
“Unfortunately, the responsibility of making it better lies in the hands of all of us”.
“The responsibility of correcting this anomaly lies in our action or inaction”
“You are following the developments. What happened yesterday( Wednesday at Lagos Airport).
“At the airport, with the seizure of arms and military accouterments, before last week, before the one of yesterday, there was a big incident that happened in Onne”.
“And they are going through our hands.
” Declarations that are made by these people who go through our desk. They are inside our system”,
“What it means is that we have an onerous response. And we also have an onerous responsibility to address the national security emergency that we face in Nigeria”.
“What the trend has shown is that they are desperate, they have a network of support, they have people who conspired with them, some of them within the service, some of them outside the service”,
“And we have a responsibility not to allow them to bring those death niche merchandise into Nigeria. Of course, you know that they come in different forms.
“It’s either that they are wrongly declared, or they come to compromise our process and procedure.
“And the most important one is the fact that goods that are supposed to be scanned, or those that are supposed to undergo a physical examination, are not subjected to it”
“So, these goods are released, they are not scanned, or they are never inspected. That’s one way of doing it.
“The other one is when we say that they are going on Transire to 100 terminals, and they never get there.
“That customs officer, who would be the victim of kidnapping, who would be the victim of terrorist attack, that family that might be facing this kind of problem, might be yours or mine if we decide to abuse the oath of office that we swore to uphold. So, it’s all up to you.
Then he warned his officers of the consequences of their actions and inaction which he said could be dire.
“But the bad news for all of you is that we work with a system that has track and trace.
“What each and all of you do with our system can be tracked. It can be tracked. It can be traced. We can attribute them to you in the next seven years or beyond.
“What you do not do can also be attributed to you. So, either way, we can be located and we can be called upon to account for our actions or inaction.
“So, I therefore urge you to lead to your responsibility. This nation is ours. Revenue is important. Trade facilitation is important. We are getting it right on those ends”
“We must not fail on our mandate of national security. There are containers of fake drugs that are waiting to come out of the port as I speak.
“There are containers of arms and ammunition that are there. There are containers of frozen poultry products under import prohibition that are there as we are speaking”, he said.
“And we have all the risk indicators. To show them to us.
“We have everything it takes to trace the importers, to do system audits on our own, and put question marks on some of them”
“So, the responsibility lies with all of us to live up to the oath of service, the oath of allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
Then the clincher
“If anybody is caught on the wrong side of the law, if anybody is traced to these activities if any bonded warehouse owner is traced, if any customs agent is traced to it, we will not spare anybody. We will not spare anybody”.
He warned them not to abuse his friendly disposition as this could be fatal because he has the capacity to bite
“Those of you who know the Yoruba proverb, because people say I smile too much, that I am too friendly, that I am too soft, and I am happy to be given all of that.
“But those who do not understand Yoruba should go and hire a consultant to translate the meaning of Eyin ta finbomo rerin naaa lafin geje”.( The same teeth we use to laugh with children are the same we use to bite them)
“I wish you a nice day. Thank you”, he concluded with a deadpan expression.
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Customs
Tinubu celebrates Adeniyi on his 59th birthday
Customs
Onyeka, Tin Can CAC, set to pursue revenue generation aggressively
— vows to surpass 1 trillion naira revenue record
Funso OLOJO
The Area Controller of the Tin Can island command of the Nigeria customs service, Comptroller Frank Onyeka, has set an ambitious goal of meeting and surpassing the one trillion naira revenue mark achieved last year by his predecessor, ACG Dera Nnadi.
It would be recalled that the command was given a revenue target of N1.4 trillion in 2024 while it realized a little about N1.226 trillion ,an unprecedented record that was never achieved in the history of the command.
Meanwhile, Comptroller Onyeka, has vowed to sustain the revenue momentum as he would aggressively pursue revenue collection.
Speaking while playing host to the Executive council of the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria(MARAN) which paid him a courtesy visit in his office on Friday, January 17th, 2025, the Customs chief disclosed his strategy to carry out his assignment.
According to him, he would facilitate legitimate trade, ensure 100 percent examination of all imports while he would energise his men and officers to key into his vision.
“I’ll facilitate trade, but it has to be legitimate trade. That’s what I feel I should do in the strict sense.
“You know, I’m coming from the aspect of revenue. So, it is my prayer and my hope to meet my target and surpass it.
“But principally, what I am going to fight is the ability to do this job without examination.
“I have appealed to my officers, whatever it is they have to do, let them see the containers, once we’ve examined them, everything should be on cruise control because if you examine, you’ll now know if it’s supposed to go out or not.
“I’ve involved Customs Intelligence Unit, CIU, I’ve involved Valuation Unit, I’ve spoken to all relevant Units and it’s my prayer, by the grace of God, that all of us will be on the same page to make sure that the renewed hope agenda of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu is brought to fruition” he noted.
He was full of gratitude to the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi , for the confidence reposed in him and vowed never to disappoint him.
“I also appreciate the fact that our indefatigable Comptroller General Of Customs, CGC Bashir Adewale Adeniyi to whom I’m very grateful.
“He needs to be made to know that he didn’t make any mistake for him to have brought me here.
“I am very grateful to him and his management team, and I need to make him proud” he enthused.
Comptroller Onyeka also vowed to build on the foundation that has been laid by his predecessor, Assistant Comptroller General Dera Nnadi.
“In anti-smuggling, he did well. In revenue generation, he did superbly well, same goes for infrastructure development.
“His Public Relations was top-notch, which I’m going to leverage.
“He was fortunate to have what I consider a very fantastic rapport with the media because that’s his background. I intend to leverage that. I intend to do better in that aspect” he added.
Earlier, in his address, the President of MARAN, Mr Godfrey Bivbere expressed the willingness of the association to partner with the CAC and the Command to achieve the target ahead of the command.
He reiterated the firm resolution of the association to accord Comptroller Onyeka the same support accorded to his predecessor.
Customs
Pressure mounts on Customs as National Assembly reviews N6.5 trillion 2025 revenue target to N12 trillion.
—– as the service closes 2024 with N6.105 trillion revenue collection
Funso OLOJO
The National Assembly seems to be stretching the capacity of the Nigeria customs service for revenue generation to the limit as it has given the service an unprecedented task of generating a whooping sum of N12 trillion in 2025 into the government coffers.
This amount doubles the N6.5 trillion earlier projected revenue target for the service in 2025.
Apparently cashing in on the blistering revenue- generating performance of the service which surpassed the N5.079 trillion target of 2024 by 20.2 percent, the laws makers made the adjustment to the initial set target for 2025.
The National Assembly’s joint committee on Finance led by its chairmen, Senator Sani Musa and Hon. James Faleke, believed that the projection of N6.5 trillion was conservative and encouraged the NCS to aim higher.
Their decision followed the opinions of members of the joint committee who argued that the customs, based on its past geometric rise in revenue collection over the years, has the capacity to generate more that the projected target for 2025.
“Based on the aggregate opinions expressed by members of this committee, the Comptroller-General of Customs should aim at generating N12 trillion revenue for Nigeria in 2025, almost doubling the N6.5 trillion proposed by Customs itself,” Senator Musa said.
The adjustments were made during budget and revenue projection defence sessions on Tuesday, where Chief Executives from various federal agencies presented their 2024 budgets and 2025 revenue forecasts.
Meanwhile, the Comptroller-General of the Customs, Adewale Adeniyi on Tuesday, January 14th, 2025 in Abuja, made a public presentation of the performance of the service in 2024.
At the public presentation, Adeniyi gave account of the impressive performance of the service in revenue generation, trade facilitation, anti – smuggling efforts and other capacity – enhancing programmes of the agency in 2024.
According to him, the service collected₦6,105,315,543,489.50 in 2024
which surpassed the revenue target of ₦5,079,069,866,085.50 by ₦1,026,245,677,404.00, representing a 20.2% increase above the target.
Similarly, the service processed imports with a Cost, Insurance, and Freight (CIF) value of ₦60.29 trillion in 2024, representing a remarkable 117.4% increase from ₦27.74 trillion in 2023.
” This was achieved through 1,262,988 import transactions, handling a total mass of 15.35 billion kilograms.
“The higher value recorded despite an 8.2% decrease in transaction volume from the previous year’s 1,376,514 transactions indicates a shift towards higher-value goods in our import trade portfolio.”
Equally, the service recorded an impressive trade performance with the total CIF value rising significantly to ₦136.65 trillion in 2024 from ₦42.77 trillion in 2023, marking a 219.5% increase.
“While the number of export transactions remained relatively stable at 38,199 compared to 38,294 in 2023, we witnessed a substantial increase in export volume, processing 12.35 billion kilograms in 2024 compared to 3.70 billion kilograms in 2023.
“This 234% increase in export mass, coupled with the higher value, indicates a robust growth in our export trade and suggests increasing competitiveness of Nigerian products in the international market.
“The total trade value handled by the Service in 2024 amounted to ₦196.94 trillion, compared to ₦70.50 trillion in 2023, representing a 179.3% increase.
” This substantial growth in trade value, achieved with fewer but more valuable transactions, is evident of the increasing sophistication of Nigeria’s international trade and the effectiveness of our trade facilitation measures” the CGC declared.
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