Customs Collects N903bn Revenue For 2015 – Hameed Ali, CG, CUSTOMS

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS)
collected a total of N903 billion in 2015
out of a target of N954 billion,
comptroller-general of the Service Col.
Hameed Ali Rtd, has said.

Ali who stated this while fielding
questions from journalists after the
decoration of newly promoted senior
officers of the Service in Abuja, noted
that the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN)
policy on the importation of 41 items
denied the Customs revenue collection to
the tune of N240 billion in 2015.

The CGC yesterday decorated six newly
promoted Deputy Comptrollers General
and eight Assistant Comptrollers General.
He said, “If we had added that to what
we have generated it would have
surpassed what we have, so that is the
down side of why we were not able to
meet the target in 2015.”

Ali who expressed the hope that the
Service will surpass its target for 2016 in
view of the tools already put in place by
the management, added, “I hope also
that government will once again look at
those policies and see how they can be
fine-tuned.”

As part of efforts to meeting the 2016
target, the CGC said he has gone round
the various Commands where he urged
officers to work harder as well as help
the agency clear the correct the bad
impression the public has about it.

The newly decorated officers include
DCGs Suleiman Ibrahim Idris, Grace
Adeyemo, Dan Ugo, Paul Ukaigwe,
Abubakar Umar and Austen Warikoru.
The ACGs include Sanusi Umar, Aremu
Olatunji, Chidi Augustine, Azarema
Abdulkadir among others.

While congratulating the officers, he
underscored the fact that their promotion
did not come by way of lobby or
compromise but based purely on merit
from available records.

Charging the officers, Ali said, “I expect
nothing less than the best. I expect from
you henceforth hard work, commitment
and drive for the best. My mission in the
NCS is to make it the best of Service not
only within Nigeria but across the
nations.

“My mission is to make sure we clean
ourselves of all the bad impression that
we carry along, my mission is to ensure
that we meet all the mandate set for us
by the government and I believe that all
of you will have no other mission than to
fall in with that and make sure that 2016
is put on the record as one of the best
years of the NCS.”