>
Between October and November 2015, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated a total revenue of N1,178,720,376 from rice Imports through land borders, the Comptroller General, Hameed Ali, has said.
The CGC who indicated this during a strategy session he convened to review revenue performance for the year, also noted that the total quantity of rice imported through the land borders during the same period, stood at 17.596 Metric Tonnes.
Maritime First reports that according to the breakdown he provided, Idiroko border in Ogun Command has the largest volume of 8.276 Metric tonnes, with a collection of N555,152,344 duty.
This figure was subsequently followed by Katsina Borders with a quantity of 3,636 Metric tones (MT) imported, grossing in a total revenue of N242,985,626; when a total of 2.156 metric tones was imported through the land borders of Oyo/Osun command, generating a total revenue of N144,278,025.
The breakdown also showed that from the Seme border came 2,140 Metric Tonnes with N143,349,658; Sokoto – 602MT with N40,162,759; Kano/Jigawa – 470 MT with N31,536,148; when the Adamawa/Taraba command generated 248 MT with N16,545,422 as duty.
The Niger/Kwara/Kogi however came last with only 68 MT with N4,710,394
The Comptroller General’s decision to un-banned the movement of rice into the country two months ago had not gone down well with the Senate.
But speaking on Wednesday, he said: “The huge collection in just two months has vindicated our position. If we had stuck to our previous directive, this much quantum of rice would still have been smuggled anyway, and we would have lost over a billion Naira revenue as this critical period of our economic downtown”.
It would be recalled that only two months ago, the Col. Handed Ali approved the removal of the restriction placed on importation of rice through the land borders. The removal was predicated on the large scale rice smuggling through land borders, resulting to huge revenue loss and distortions in the price of the item in the local markets.