The Comptroller-General of Nigerian Customs Service (NCS), Mr Abdullahi Dikko on Wednesday in Abuja reiterated the Customs commitment to tackling smuggling to facilitate trade.

Dikko made this known at the International Customs Day celebration where seven customs officers were awarded certificates of excellent performance, while four non-Customs officers were rewarded for their support to the service. He said that the World Customs Organisation (WCO) chose this year’s theme: “Knowledge: a catalyst for Customs excellence” to spur national administrations to give prominence the development of human capital as a sure way of building strong and resilient institutions.

“Without gainsaying, one of the reasons for the continued existence of Customs administration, other than revenue generation and suppression of smuggling, was the facilitation of trade. My management, conscious of its responsibilities to building a first class institution, has set aside a large amount of the annual service budget for capacity building,” Dikko said.

He said that the service undertook some measures last year that helped to enhance national economic growth. Dikko said that the service initiated and enhanced channels of communication between the service and the general trading and manufacturing sectors of the economy through their associations and groups.

He said that the service also initiated and strengthened the clearance of goods at the ports through some dedicated channels, adding that it linked banks and shipping companies to the Customs server for ease of financial transactions and release of goods. In his message of goodwill, the representative of Transformation Institute International of Canada, Mr Daniel Monehin noted that Dikko had been committed to capacity building in the Customs Department, making the organisation to continue to stand tall.

The Director in charge of capacity building at the WCO, Mr Lars Karlsson, also corroborated Monehin”s assertion when he said that the NCS had been focusing on capacity building since the assumption of office of its current Comptroller-General