From Olanrewaju Lawal, Birnin Kebbi
The Coordinator of Borders Drill Sector 4 of Nigerian’s Customs Service (NCS), North West axis, Comptroller Kola Oladeji has disclosed that goods worth N42,429,534.63 were intercepted at various locations in Kebbi State.
Oladeji,who disclosed this while briefing newsmen at the NCS Headquarters, Birnin Kebbi disclosed that, one suspect who was a driver of a truck was arrested along with snuggled packaging items and has been granted bail according to his fundamental human rights.
He listed the items intercepted which includes; 972,500 of packaging materials worth N32,088,037.31; 16 bales of used cloths worth N5,284,700.00; 95 cartons of foreign spaghetti worth N1,192,360.44 and 65 Jerry cans of vegetable oil worth N3,864,436.88.
“The total items here have Duty Paid Value. The total Duty Paid Value of these seized items is N42,429,534.63. You can see that this is a big money. They invested in a wrong businesses, wrong places. This is the reward for being saboteurs of nation’s economy. This is the reward for being a smugglers.
“These money now, they would never recovered it again because we are seizing them which includes the conveyance. This is in accordance with the Customs Act of 2023 section 2445.
“I will advise these smugglers to tour a new path of business because Nigeria’s Custom Service is always ready to assist any Nigerian who is involving in a legitimate business. It is our mandate to facilitate legitimate businesses for the growth of our economy.
“Our people should endeavour to assist Government by doing legitimate businesses.”
Oladeji also affirmed that the borders that were still remained closed was decision of ECOWAS, not only Nigeria’s Government decision, stressed that there would not be any movement of goods and services through borders under closure.
According to him, “I am using this opportunity to inform our people that the borders still remained closed and joint patrol which I am the Co-ordinator have been given the mandate to ensure that there is total compliances of the borders closure.
“If we don’t carry our foods to other countries,we are going to have sufficient food. But some of our people are producing local rice and they are smuggling out to other Countries and we are still hungry in this country. If we discovered anybody smuggling out such food,we shall arrest and impounded the goods”.
He added that the smugglers have adopted another style by putting foreign goods inside made in Nigeria cartons in order to deceived the Customs officers.
Oladeji noted that some of the items impounded were from Yauri waterside,Bani in Bunza, Ambursa and Bagudo waterside which were seized between January and February 2024, stressed that the smugglers were using horses, motorcycles to conveying the items from various locations where they were deposited to outside the country.