Auto duty: Customs rolls out code for clearance verification

The Comptroller-General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (Rtd) yesterday announced a short code that allows dealers and owners of vehicles to verify their duty clearance status.

At a media stakeholders meeting in Abuja, Col. Ali said the Service took further steps to ensure that Nigerians, who wanted to verify the authenticity of their customs duty clearance, could do so efficiently.

He said: “For effective and easy customs duty clearance verification, you can dial or send SMS to these numbers 094621597 with your vehicle C-number, the year you paid the duty and the port or location where the vehicle came through into the country.

“Immediately all that information is given, just in five minutes you will get a response whether your vehicle duty clearance is genuine or not,” he explained.

To allow for traffic flow, Customs said the last digit ‘7’ in the row of 094621597 can be either changed to 8 or 9, to get have access to different customs personnel on duty.

The Customs boss said Nigerians misunderstood the intention of the Service in rolling out the grace period to clear vehicle duty saying the exercise was targeted at motor dealers upon request.

He said Customs then extended it to private vehicle owners to benefit from the high rebate of 60 per cent given during the grace period so they can get genuine duty clearance upon verification.