The Nigerian Customs Service has announced that it would go digital once it concludes its automation system by 2022. The announcement came from the Comptroller General of the NCS, Col. Hammed Ali during the International Customs Day at the NCS headquarters, Abuja.
Ali explained that President Muhammadu Buhari had earlier approved the e-Customs Project for the service. He said that when fully functional, any customs officer, who cannot handle the computer would be out of service.
The customs boss said that he had started to create awareness in the service so that every official would know how to handle the computer. He said that once the platform is put in place, the latest in two years, every activity in Customs would be paperless and digital compliant.
‘‘It is our hope that once that platform is put in place, latest in two years, every activity in Customs will be paperless and digital. That is why we have been notifying our officers that everybody must know how to manipulate Computer, otherwise, in the next two years, anybody that cannot handle computer is out of custom.’’
What you should know: The e-Customs Project is a Digital platform and is an all-encompassing automation system that has to do with administration, payment, border management, export and import processing designed to migrate the Service from paper to paperless system of operation.
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While commenting on the service’s revenue generation plans, Vanguard reported that Ali said the officials were seriously working on the revenue target for 2020.
‘We are working on the target given to us by the Federal Government based on lots of parameters. We are looking at economic development, prosperity before we decide how much we should be generating.’’
Recall that Customs had generated a total of N1.341 trillion in revenue in 2019 as reported by Nairametrics. The service exceeded its target of N937 billion by N404 billion.
The amount generated was attributed largely to the land border closure policy of the Federal Government, which is also N139.24 billion more than the N1.20 trillion generated in 2018.
According to Ali, other achievements of the Service in 2019 include the seizure of prohibited goods worth over N32.83 billion, the interception of illicit cash flows through airports and the increasing gains of the ongoing border drill in collaboration with other security agencies.
NAIRAMETRICS