THE Federal Government through the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has commenced a detailed investigation on implementation of Nigeria’s automotive policy.
The Public Relation Officer of NCS, Wale Adeniyi who revealed the development in Lagos said relevant firms should be prepared to make information available to the investigating team.
Adeniyi said: “there are beneficiaries in the Automotive and Hotel/Hospitality Industry who have enjoyed concessions worth billions of Naira. We are compiling the names of these beneficiaries and will request them to justify the concession they enjoyed”.
Adeniyi added: “We are appealing to all genuine importers not to exercise any fear as this is not designeed to witch-hunt any one. This exercise is only about enforcing payment that are legitimately due to the Federal Government of Nigeria”.
Adeniyi was in Lagos onbehalf of the NCS Comptroller General, Abdullahi Dikko to seal the premises of some importers over N23.6billion debt unpaid duty.
The importers are: Stallion/Popular Foods, Masco Agro, Ebony Agro and Conti Agro over alleged N23.6 Billion debt.
He said: “We wrote the affected importers severally to notify them of duty liability at normal rate if they exceeded their quota. Similarly, we published many notices in National Newspapers, including where affected importers were mentioned with outstanding payments”.
He added: “The publications gave ultimatum to pay the outstanding charges against them. However, there were lots of interventions and clarifications required to establish firmly our case against the importers. In some cases, some of them claimed they needed to reconcile figures with the Ministry of Agriculture.
“You may also recall that we threatened to invoke sanctions on these importers if they do not meet their obligations. Today, we are no longer issuing ultimatum. We are ready to walk the talk with decisive actions to recover outstanding duty due to the Federal Government of Nigeria”.
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