Story by Dili Utomi.
The persistent efforts of the officers of the Nigeria Customs Service particularly those of the Western Marine Command has continued to pay off as they continue to tighten the screws round the proverbial necks of smugglers in order to consistently meet the core mandates of the Service.
The Nigerian economy is presently undergoing certain reforms that have seemingly created temporary slow down of some economic activities, but that has not seen any general reduction in the generated revenues and the amount of seized contraband items.
In fact and on the contrary, there has been marked improvement in revenue generation and the number of seized items. These can be attributed to mainly a few factors-high morale among officers, leadership style and then policy.
These factors have seen the Western Marine Command with Comptroller PK Bamisaiye at helms leading his men to consistent good performance in their duty. A close look at the Command’s half year performance show a interesting figures.
In the first half of 2024 the Command recorded 26 incidents of seizures in its operations which are worth ₦843,424,000.00 in duty paid value and this represents a significant increase of ₦724,842,665.00 from the 2023 performance of N118,581,335 a percentage Increase of 611.26% by the Command in the mid-year.
It is also reported that the Command in scrutinising its 2024 anti-smuggling performance analysis discovered that top among the commodities that made their 2024 performance possible is the seizure of a total of 5,685 loaves of Cannabis Sativa in the first 6 months of the year which was worth N711,700,500 contributing a huge chunk of the Impressive half year performance.
In further sustaining the tempo in the Command’s core mandate, a total seizures of 925bags of 5Okg bags of foreign parboiled rice was made from January to June 2024 contributing a duty paid value of ₦97,448,000.00 for subject Commodity to the command’s performance a figure that is above the 2023 DPV figure of N86,600,000.00 by over N10,000,000.
Another important commodity of whose seizure contributed to the notable mid-year performance of the Command is the interceptions of Petroleum Motor Spirit (PMS). A comprehensive analysis of interceptions of PMS reveals a total seizure of 21,500 litres of the product was made in the period under review this was against 17,865 litres seized in the same period in the corresponding year amounting to N14,186,000.00.00 DPV in January to June 2024 against a total of N2,707,433.00 in the same period in 2023.
The Western Marine Command has under the leadership of Comptroller Bamisaiye in fulfilling its mandate of enforcing its anti-smuggling functions promised not to leave anything to chance in ensuring that it supports the CGC and his Management’s efforts towards meeting the Service’s anti-smuggling targeting of ensuring that smuggling is brought down to its barest minimum.
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