Agents forged my signature, cleared vehicles – Customs boss

The customs inspector in charge of the TinCan Island Command of the Nigerian Customs Service, Controller Adekunle Oloyode, has said that four customs agents forged his signature to clear imported cars.

Oloyode, who said this while briefing reporters on the command’s semi-annual report, said the officers wanted to clear four trucks and some cars.

He added that the officers were arrested even though they had been given administrative bail.

“We discovered an incident of forgery of the Area Controller’s signature, which is why you have this here. The standard procedure for the approval of non-standard vehicle identification numbers is that the CAC must approve the use of that specific code. So their papers were still on my table, but they continued to forge my signature on another application.”

He explained further, saying: “They were trying to escape and get out of the terminal. The agents who had to release the goods were vigilant enough because I sent a sample of my signature to all terminals. So these four trucks belong to four different people and they forged my signature. They were detained and detained for some time, but have been released on bail for the time being for human rights reasons. But if we continue, we will certainly prosecute them.”

Meanwhile, the CAC said the command collected a total of N274 between January and June 2022. 320 billion a figure he said represented a 27.50 percent increase from what the command amassed over the same period in 2021.

Oloyode said the command had strengthened the risk management structure to mitigate consistent attempts by some non-complaint officers to abuse the process through commercial fraud.

“At the command level, we faced challenges in the early stages of the deployment due to the level of understanding of the process, especially on the part of stakeholders. Nevertheless, we were able to overcome these when we put Article 2 of the Trade Facilitation Agreement into effect through ongoing engagement and consultation with the relevant stakeholders, which has led to updates and upgrades to the service to address some of these challenges. .

He said it has experienced an increase in export activity within the period.

According to him, the command recorded an outbound export cargo throughput of 138,245.50 metric tons, a 73 percent increase from 100,500 recorded in 2022.

“With a Free on Board of N100 447, 304, 814.00, this represents a 69 percent increase over N66, 294, 630,421.00 recorded in fiscal 2022,” he concluded.