If you ask me, I can tell you that he has not disappointed stakeholders nor his colleagues, in the onerous task of executing the functions given to him. Right from his stint at the Murtala Muhammed Airport to the CG Strike force where he served meritoriously as a Deputy Comptroller-Revenue and Co-ordinator for the western zone respectively, he left no one in doubt that he was determined to up the ante, waging an undisputed war against smuggling and the barons behind it.
He is a revenue officer, now turned enforcement guru. In his time as co-ordinator of the Comptroller General’s Strike force, the Unit was given a revenue target of N500 million weekly, the first time the CG Strike force would be given a target. And the man behind the mask, Compt Mohammed Sani Yusuf did not fail. Most times he would surpass the target, giving his bosses in Abuja Headquarter the confidence that they didn’t make any mistake in his appointment.
Other than N2 billion rolling into government coffers through the raising of Demand Notices (DN), Yusuf will generate much more. And his strategy in doing this was not through any intimidation, but through collaborative efforts and agreement with traders/Agents and importers on the reasons for the issuance of DN on such goods which point to the fact that appropriate duties were not paid on them earlier on.
This, perhaps will be the truest definition of trade facilitation in practical terms. Yusuf reserved the right to seize most of those goods, but giving his operation a human face formed part of his day to day dispensation.
At the end of his sojourn at the Strike force, seizure profile piled up-running into billions of naira. Spectacular seizures of Pangolin scales, tramadol, elephant tusks, Indian Hemp and thousands of foreign parboiled rice. Arms and ammunition were not left out. Mohammed Sani Yusuf –a smooth operator, strategic in his duties and very humble proved book makers who thought he would not fit into the big shoes left by Shuaibu wrong.
His unique feats at the Strike force provoked an award from very responsible organisations such as the League of Maritime Editors who honoured him as one of the anti-smuggling officers that the Customs Service can be proud of today. Not stopping there, the Service considered him for a promotion to the most desirable rank of a full Comptroller, capping it up also with his redeployment to Murtala Muhammed Airport Command where he has started making waves in revenue generation.
He is redrawing the revenue graph of the Command as he generated more than N6.5 billion in the month of February as against a little over N4 billion in the corresponding period of last year. In January however, the Command generated little over N5 billion.
Yusuf said the command is more than over determined to make a positive mark in its operations, though he was quick to state that the current economy will also affect the import activities going by the difficulty in accessing foreign exchange. He noted that correct duty evaluation would be intensified to ensure that there is no revenue shortfall at the Command.