By Ifeyinwa Obi

THE Nigeria Customs Service NCS last week arrested 36 importers and agents, as crack teams of Customs Duty Payment Investigation DPIT officers resumed a new onslaught to recover monies owed the Federal Government as unpaid duty.

The new initiative is a decision of the comptroller general of Customs CGC, Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi, after the he uncovered sharp practices, resulting in un-paid customs duty, estimated at N12.6 billion.

The comptroller general was said to have been miffed that some bond beneficiaries ignored their obligations of payment of duty when due, while several, in the course of playing for time, also allegedly began to make moves to cover their tracks.

Consequently, the comptroller general was said to have issued directives, which in the process of enforcing compliance with payment of Demands Notices (DNs) raised, resulted in the blocking out of about 200 agents and importers, culminating in the hurried payment by a few, who have now been un-blocked.

Specifically, the amount of payment made and detected during e-payment regime was put at N14.95 billion, yet only N4.99 billion could be accounted for. Apapa was said to be most hit, followed by the Lilypond command.A breakdown of the uncovered fraud showed that N2,813,630,681 manually paid to the Lilypond Command, could not be accounted for; thus leaving the entire N2.8 billion totally outstanding.