CAC MS Yusuf of the MMAC.
Story by Dili Utomi.
The tough economic environment coupled with different factors have greatly impacted negatively on the socio-economic lives of many a Nigerian as well as on lots of corporate entities, but despite these there are still certain individuals, corporate bodies and government establishments that have managed to weather the storm and are posting impressive turns.
Generally, the Nigeria Customs Service is a government agency primarily saddled with the functions of trade facilitation and revenue generation and these functions have been particularly made arduous by a number of factors ranging from smuggling activities, theft, dishonest trade practices, the lack of desire on the part of the people to pay the right rates on goods, hostility from the populace and even sometimes weak government policies and low morale among officers. In reality, the factors above could discourage some, but for the resilient, these are mere stepping stones.
We undertook to find out the performances of one of the Commands under the Nigeria Customs Service, the Murtala Mohammed Airport Command, Ikeja Lagos. The greatalternativenetwork.com had an exclusive interview with the Customs Area Comptroller of the Command, Comptroller Yusuf, Mohammed Sani.
A cursory look at the performance of the Command since his resumption of office in February this year shows that the Command has generated a total of Sixty Seven Billion, Seventy Eight Million, One Hundred and Eight Thousand, Three Hundred and Twenty Seven Naira, One Kobo (#67,078,108,327.01k) only as at September ending as against the figure of the whole period of 2022 with total a generated amount of Sixty Nine Billion, Seven Hundred and Sixty Eight Million, Five Hundred and Nine Thousand, Five Hundred and Ninety Seven Naira, Seventy Nine Kobo (#69,768,509,597.79) only. It therefore means that it takes less than Two Billion Naira to beat the record of 2022 even though we are still in October.
CAC Yusuf said that the daily target for the Command is Four Hundred and Five Million Naira as against the Two Hundred and Fifty Million Naira previously set as target before he came in as the CAC, but that everything has been put in place to always meet the target.
His words “Due to hard work and prompt supervion and dedication to duty on the part of officers, we have been able to generate a reasonable amount as at this moment. We have also constantly engaged the stakeholders in other to make those in the informal trade and even the regular importers to abide by the tenets of the law. We have a benchmark and so try as much as possible to meet with the benchmark, though cargo throughput has drastically dropped”.
CAC Yusuf is known to operate an open door policy and he says that this has also helped to a great deal in making his job largely easier. He pleads for attitudinal change on the part of stakeholders as the case of stealing and non-compliance is still rampant, compliance though up as he said, but is still a far cry of about 60% as against the desired 100% compliance.
The CAC said that an unprecedented amount was generated in August as “the sum of Twelve Billion, Two Hundred and Nine Million, Two Hundred Eighty Eight Thousand, Seven Hundred and Twenty One Naira, Fifty Six Kobo (#12,209,288,721.56k) only was realised in that month of this year, making it historically, a record monthly revenue generated at the Command”.
He praised the collective efforts of officers, stakeholders and his superiors as well as the media for the successes acheived by the Command.
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