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- Arrests 10 suspects, impounds 14 trailer loads of rice in April
By Steve Agbota, Lagos
The Federal Operations Unit, Zone ‘A’ of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on Thursday said that the Unit through the Federal High Court has secured eight convictions of suspected smugglers in various smuggling offences in the last 10 months.
The Unit also revealed that 48 different cases are at various stages of prosecution during the same period, even as it intercepted about 2,428 x 25 litres of premium motor spirit (PMS) and other contraband worth N746.157 million and arrested 10 suspects in the last one month.
Addressing reporters during a press briefing in Lagos, the acting Area Controller of the unit, DC Hussein Kehinde, said the breakdown of the seizures include; 8,309 X 50kg bags of foreign parboiled rice, equivalent to 14 trailer loads, 221 cartons of foreign frozen poultry, 486 parcels (262kg) of Indian hemp, four units of foreign used vehicles, 111 pieces of used tyres, 10 bales of used clothing and eight sacks of used shoes.
According to him, the unit in its continuous quest to prevent revenue loss through various infractions such as; under-valuation, under-payments, and wrong classification, the sum of N66.726 million was collected following the issuance of demand notices to defaulters.
“While the smugglers planned to take us unaware during the religious festivities, our round-the-clock patrols were sustained and backed with intelligence even during the public holidays. Interestingly, the outcome of our unrelenting onslaught against smuggling is the remarkable drop evident in the number of seizures recorded with zero casualties.
“We want to reiterate that it pays for importers, exporters, haulage operators, and their agents to operate within the ambit of the law because doing otherwise places them at risk of losing their investments and facing prosecution as enshrined in the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA),” he added.
However, he warned the Nigerian public that smuggling is not a business but a crime, saying that the unit’s resolve to protect the Nigerian economy would continue to be passionately pursued, while the fight against saboteurs must remain at the front burner.
He added that the perpetrators of these criminal activities are not unaware of what the law says because the unit has taken enlightenment to them through different ways, including enlisting the assistance of traditional rulers, community leaders and the media.
He said anyone that puts in his savings or obtains loan a loan to invest in any illegitimate business will have to contend with the attendant consequences of such choices when the law will take its natural course.
“Successes recorded by this unit in the suppression of desperate measures for economic criminality would not have been possible without the deployment of logistics support provided by the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col Hameed Ibrahim Ali (retd), CFR, and his management team in the battle to protect our national economic interest, he said.
