By Adedapo Adesanya
The Acting Comptroller General of Customs, Mr Adewale Adeniyi, has said that the service under his administration will focus on decongesting the nation’s ports.
He made this disclosed at a briefing at the Presidential Villa on Tuesday, explaining that he would make the ports more user-friendly and improve an export-led economic development strategy.
After a meeting with President Bola Tinubu, Mr Adeniyi said officers and men of the service would carry out their duties in line with the objectives of the Customs Service and the Policy Advisory Document on the Customs (PAC).
“We had discussions regarding what Customs can bring to the table to actualise the vision of renewed hope for Nigeria, what customers can do in terms of addressing gaps in revenue generation in the customs, our enforcement strategies and most importantly, the issue of promoting port efficiency and competitiveness of our ports.
“In terms of specifics, I am sure that we are all very, very familiar with the Presidential Advisory Council. And there is a document which has been made public. Our discussions centre around aligning the vision of customs and the activities of customs in the short, medium and long terms with those noble objectives set out in the PAC documents.
“So, we’re talking about making our ports user-friendly.
“We’re talking about decongesting the ports, we talked about 48 hours clearance of goods around the ports, export-led inward-looking economic development strategies. So these are some of the issues that we discussed.
“And I pledged the commitment of the customs to bring out reforms and to collaborate with other agencies of government to achieve some of those objectives stated in the PAC documents,” he said.
Mr Adeniyi said the recent election of Tinubu as ECOWAS Chairman means more work for Nigeria Customs and strong collaboration among countries in the region.
“For us in the Nigerian Customs Service, ECOWAS represents a very bold attempt to forge regional integration, cooperation in border security and monetary affairs.
“And it is so good to note that my assumption of office coincides with that period when attention will be focused on Nigeria holding the flag of regional integration.
“I can also tell you that part of my discussions with Mr President is to actively engage customs administrations across our borders, particularly the strategic ones that we must work and collaborate with for us to achieve common objectives of border security and regional integration.
“In the next one week, or thereabout, I will be paying an official visit to the Republic of Benin to have discussions with the Customs Administration of Benin and see how we can take forward the issue of collaborations between us, the issue of border security, the issue of importation across the border, and more importantly, how we can deploy technological solutions to very complex border problems,” he said.
