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The Western Marine Command (WMC) of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), said it intercepted 1,286 wraps of cannabis popularly known as Indian Hemp worth over N32.750 million smuggled into the country.
The cannabis with a total weight of 1,286 kilograms was handed over to the National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) Seme Area Command in Lagos recently.
Addressing newsmen at the handing over of the illicit substance, the Customs Area Controller of WMC, Comptroller Boyiliya N. Binga, said the effect of illicit drugs in the society cannot be over emphasised, adding that the Controller General of Customs is seriously speaking tough on the issue of illicit substances and drugs.
According to him, illicit substances and drugs taken by most people’s responsible for some of the security issues in the country today. He said the agency would ensure that smuggling of illicit items are reduced to the barest minimum or even eradicated.
The WMC boss, said in the first quarter of 2019, the command made seizures of various items like frozen poultry products, foreign parboiled rice and cannabis from different places within the Command’s jurisdiction. He said for example, most of the seizures were made from Bawe, Bera waters front all in Ogun State and Akoko around Badagri axis.
He added: “We have made a total of 2,035 bags of foreign parboiled rice with a Dupty Paid Value (DPV) of N44, 973 million, 1,308 frozen products with a DPV of N12,243 million; cannabis with a DPV of N32,750 million, while the total DPV for all items is about N90,967 million.”
On the seizures made so far, he said no arrest of suspects have been recorded because each time officers come in contact with these smugglers, they abandon their items and jump into the waters, a terrain they are so used to.
However, he advised smugglers to desist from their illegal ways of doing business otherwise, they will meet their ‘waterloo’. He said the 24 hours patrol of the creeks by officers and men of the Command has kept most of the smugglers away from the waters.
