Amidst the prevalence of hunger and acute shortage of food items across the country, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has intercepted large consignments of edibles being illegally shipped out of Nigeria.
The feat was recorded by eagle-eye men of the Customs Federal Operations Unit, Zone “A”, Lagos.
Comptroller of the Special Unit, Hussein Kehinde Ejibunu, who broke the news at the weekend, said the scarce commodities were being illegally transported to neighboring Benin Republic when his men intercepted them.
He said the export bound items loaded in three trucks comprised of 880 bags of white beans, 584 bags of onions and 18 bags of dry pepper.
Ejibunu said that rather than seizing the food items, the Unit ensured the trucks were re-directed to the Nigerian markets where they were sold to Nigerians by their owners.
He also decried the antics of smugglers who now devised the use of petroleum products jerry-cans in the smuggling of rice, with the attendant dangerous consequences to health.
The Customs chief also gave a breakdown of activities of the unit in February 2024, to comprise of 93 seizures in which nine suspects were arrested.
According to him, the seizures made are worth a total duty paid value of N751,127,025.
“We also prevented the smuggling of eleven exotic used vehicles worth over N200m into the country through our area of responsibility.
“Smugglers of these vehicles met our stiff resistance against their duty evasion and deviant behaviour. The sum of N78,164,255.20 was recovered as revenue into the federation account through the issuance of demand notices on Customs duties that were discovered to be underpaid”, he said
Ejibunu noted that as usual, rice was top on the list of the February 2024 seizures in terms of volume and value, indicating a total of 3,779 X 50kg bags of suspected foreign rice equivalent to over 7 trailer loads worth over N365m seized from various parts of the South Western part of the country.
He also listed other items seized in the month under review to include one locally made gun and six pieces of empty cartridges at Abeokuta road, 731 parcels of Indian hemp weighing 482kg, 1 X 40ft container found to contain 286 cartons of new rubber slippers, 7 units of used motorcycles, 28,000 litres of premium motor spirit (PMS) and 2,420 pieces of used tyres.
He further disclosed that in all of the operations during the period under review, not a single shot was fired by his men in regard to the sanctity of life, saying his men could only fire at smugglers from the knee caps down, “as a way of self defense when the situation becomes absolutely necessary”.
