The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has defended its 2025 budget proposal of N6.584 trillion before the Senate Committee on Customs with a matching order that the revenue be raised to N10 trillion.

The Chairman of the Committee, Senator Isah Jibrin (Kogi East), who commended NCS for exceeding its 2024 revenue target, however directed the agency to generate N10 trillion revenue in 2025 instead of the target of N6.584 trillion given to it.

The NCS team led by Deputy Comptroller General of Customs, Jibo Bello, who represented the Comptroller General, presented the 2024 budget performance with a revenue target of N5.079 trillion, which was exceeded by over N1trillion.

The committee, which was obviously impressed by the performance, commended NCS and asked them to go ahead to present the 2025 proposal of N6.584 trillion revenue target and proposed expenditure of N1.132 trillion.

When Senator Jibrin put the question to his colleagues that the recommendation that the revenue target of N6.584 trillion and the expenditure of N1.132 trillion be approved for the 2025 financial year for the NCS; it was unanimously carried.

This will be subsequently presented to the Senate at plenary most likely this week as the red chamber resumes Tuesday June 24 from its short Sallah recess.

In his final remarks, Senator Jibrin emphasised the need for the NCS to rise up in terms of its surveillance with respect to illicit drugs and smuggling “to ensure that, as much as possible, you should be on top of your game”.

He said there is so much illicit drugs flowing all over the place, which according to him “is contributing to the issue of banditry in Nigeria because most of these guys are on drugs. What I’m saying is that, in addition to your revenue drives, you should also be mindful of some of these other functions.

“Then the issue of smuggling generally is also very important. So many items have been smuggled into Nigeria and that shouldn’t be so. The president of the country did mention some time ago that we should eat or consume what we produce.

“The essence of that is that we should as much as possible curtail or reduce importation to the basics. Most of these items that are imported or smuggled into Nigeria can be produced comfortably here, even in their most crude form. Let’s consumed what we produce so as to conserve our foreign exchange earnings.

“By the time that is done and there is patronage of these, companies that are producing some of these items in Nigeria, a lot of employment opportunities will be generated; a lot of raw materials that are idling away all over the place will also be put into use,” he said.