Customs blame revenue lull on govt task force on trucks evacuation

By Uzor Odigbo

The Tin Can 2 command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS)  said it experienced lull in revenue collection for the month of July due to the deployment of government agencies to restore  sanity on the port access roads.

Though the command was able to surpass it’s monthly target set aside by management of the service, it could not up the ante when compared to what was collected in June.

Recall that few weeks back,  the Oshodi-Apapa Expressway was completely blocked by articulated vehicles because of the breakdown of operations at the Ports.

The situation led to complete state of chaos with attendant negative effects on the people and the economy of not just Lagos State, but Nigeria considering the strategic importance of Apapa to the nation’s economy.

The federal and Lagos State governments constituted a Task Force headed by Commissioner of Police Imohimi Edgal to restore sanity.

The Task Force had membership drawn from all security agencies and relevant unions within the maritime sector.

The Task Force was able to clear the service lane within 72 hours in an operation through which over 2000 articulated vehicles were removed from the road and taken to designated holding bays.

But speaking with newsmen in Lagos on Tuesday, Public Relations Officer of the command, Mr. Farouk Abubakar said the command collected N1,497,334,030.00 in the month of July against N2,407,477,135.00  it generated in June 2018.

The command has a monthly target of N1,432,773,836.56 .
Despite the wide margin, the command surpassed the monthly target with N64,560,00 for the month of July.

Farouk lamented that in spite of the lull in its revenue collection for last month due to state task force, which halted operations for two weeks at the facility, it was able to surpass the monthly target.

The spokesman maintained that bulk of the revenue collected came from the Lekki  Free Trade Zone.
“As a result of the Lagos State taskforce deployment to Apapa in order to clear the traffic on Wharf road made it impossible to generate more revenues because the terminal was completely blocked for close to two weeks.
“However bulk of our revenue recorded in July came from the Lekki Free Trade Zone”,he added.

According to the document made available to our correspondent, the command has so far collected a whooping 17,193,286,038.07 between January and July 2018.