By Kayode Araba.
This, the Senate has alerted the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) that the N5.079 trillion 2024 revenue target of the agency will be reviewed upwards from the second half of the year to save the country from further borrowings.
However, Chairman, Senate Committee on Customs, Isah Jibrin stated this at a crucial meeting with the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service NCS, Adewale Adeniyi and top management of the revenue agency.
He said, Nigeria is saddled with lot of debt obligations and we need to wriggle ourselves out of that trap and one of the ways to do that is internally generated revenue and customs is one of the major providers of internally generated revenue and as it is today, we expect them to play one of the major roles in drive to reduce our debt burden..
Also, talking about the rate of unemployment in Nigeria, which he described as “very high”, Senator Jibrin said “Customs is not the only employer of Labour. They can only employ the number they believed, they can adequately take care of and we are putting them under pressure to exceed the 1,600 benchmark. We may not get beyond 2000, but for sure, we will get 1,6000 he said.
He said if the approval is given within 3 months, if you are in possession of vehicles that were illegally imported into the country or that have not paid duties, you have this opportunity to go to Customs House for assessment and payment of duties this he said will be done after adequate publicity so that those who find themselves in such situation can get their vehicles regularise through payment of duties.
“Correctly, it 8s the mandate of the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN to fix the rate, either the one we use during Medium Term Expenditure Framework, MTEF or the one we use for importation or the one used for payment of Customs duties. I have been in discussions with my minister. Perhaps, what you are going to advocate is that there would be a meeting point between authorities of government that are in charge of monetary policy and those in charge of fiscal policies.
