Nura Miko, Deputy Controller in Charge of Revenue at Apapa Port Command discloses how he worked out the discovery of huge amounts of unpaid duties in Apapa Port, dating few years back and efforts being made to achieve full recovery.
(Q)Tell us what it’s like with revenue collection in Apapa because it’s been looking upward all the while since this year, especially when you’ve assumed duty as acting DC Revenue and later substantive DC.
This is a tough one and I believe it’s the most challenging work in revenue collection. It involves strategy ,persistence, follow ups in recovering all these revenues and collections. Due to the level that we find ourselves, the economic impacts of all this importation has reduced drastically, but we were able to devise a strategy to look inward within the confines of the law and recover some revenue would have been lost, which has added to the total revenue. That is part of why you see our collection going up.
(Q) What role did interventions like DN play and how were you able to block leakages?
We were able to block some leakages through intelligent driven risk management. We profile transactions, we concentrate on high risk cargo, we look at the infraction and we ensure that we make recoveries on them.
Instead of just sampling, we try to minimise ,reduce the scope and mine those data in order to get the revenue collection, which we added to our daily revenue figures
(Q) When you try to recover revenue through audit-like style, don’t you encounter some level of resistance, hiding or schemes to evade payments?
There is always some resistance, as nobody wants to pay taxes . Everyone wants to have their way. However, we have developed effective ways of engaging with our stakeholders. Sometimes, we show them the level of infractions and explain why a particular item attracts certain payments.
Once we provide clear reasons for the recoveries or any required payments, they often understand and cooperate. It does, however, require a strategic approach. By the time we enlighten and guide them through the process, they usually become more willing to comply. The strategy we adopt is what we call the compliance model.
When we apply the compliance model, we make it clear to them that improved compliance leads to greater benefits , for instance, once they meet certain standards, we upgrade them and their trade processes are further facilitated.
During recoveries, when we point out the specific infractions and the corresponding HS codes, there’s usually no argument. As long as we take the time to explain the issues and engage with them in a customer-friendly manner, they readily understand and cooperate by paying the recoveries.
(Q) Could you give us in total what has been recovered and what has been paid within the period you took charge?
Within the period I took charge, the DN in CPC monthly, was an average of ₦700m to ₦1.2b billion. It varies within the month. For my own personal recovery, I started a recovery journey from 2022 to 2025. So far, we have recovered about 30.9 billion out of 241 billion . So the total is ₦241 billion but 30.9 has been paid already.
So this is where we are at and we are pursuing it aggressively. Some of these recoveries were abandoned. Most of the bills of laden were on liquid cargoes. And so when we pursue these recoveries, we make them understand the infraction involved. With that, they are obliging and they are paying. So we hope before the end of the year, we’ll be able to recover the whole ₦241 billion.
(Q) What do you consider the biggest challenge you encounter on this task?
Some are not responding to our letters. We make phone calls, do follow up, we even threaten to even block their agencies. But they always come with different sort of stories. With that, we show them the reason why they should pay. This information about their indebtedness to government will never go away from our system. It will always be there and they will have to pay it at some point.
We are convincing them and with that, they are seeing the reasons why they should pay.
(Q) In conclusion, if they don’t pay, what will happen?
Through the intervention which is approved by the Comptroller General of Customs Bashir Adewale Adeniyi through the Deputy Comptroller General Tariff &Trade , they were able to approve and we shut down about three terminals. One office, two bonded terminals the simple reason is, we will be writing a letter to them to make payment on all these recoveries and they are not coming forward for them. But due to their intervention, we were able to shut down those bonded terminals and the companies are responding now.
When others see that we are serious about the recoveries with possible sanctions, they have started cooperating.They are coming forward to make the payments, voluntarily. We will recover everything for government.
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