By Steve Agbota
Petroleum Marketers operating at the Idiroko Ipokia have called for the arrest of the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), for flouting of judgement of the Federal High Court (FHC), Abeokuta, over arrest and auctioning of 24 petroleum laden tanker trucks as scrap.
Daily Sun reports, on Monday, that Justice Shittu Abubakar, of the FHC, Abeokuta, had on 9th August, 2022, ordered the service to return 24 tanker trucks illegally impounded from the Petroleum Marketers back with its full content. But, rather than obey the judgement and return the trucks to the owners, the service auctioned the trucks with all it’s content.
However, speaking on behalf of the Petroleum Marketers at their secretariat, on Tuesday, the Legal representative of the Idiroko-Ipokia Area Petroleum Dealers & Marketers Association, George Oyeniyi, said the content in the 24 trucks as well as the content were valued at N1.56billion.
According to him, the marketers demanded enforcement of the judgement delivered by Justice Shittu Abubakar, and arrest of the Customs CG for flouting the judgment of a court of competent jurisdiction.
He stated further that the service sold the impounded petroleum laden trucks even after the court had delivered its judgement.
“Sometimes in 2019, that was around 9th of November, petroleum dealers and marketers woke up to the news that the Nigeria Customs Service has issued a circular suspending the supply of petroleum products from within 20 kilometers to the border. However, most of this petroleum marketers already had petroleum products that had been booked days before the day of the Customs circular, in their various petroleum stations. Some of these marketers already had petroleum products in their various tankers right inside their filling stations, about to be discharged into their underground storage facilities in the filling stations.”
“So due to this confusing situation, the Customs Area Controller of Idiroko Customs Command as at that time, Controller Micheal Agbara, called petroleum marketers to a meeting, where he gave them a four days grace period to dispose off all the petroleum products in their various filling stations before enforcement of that circular will begin.”
“However, two days after that circular, officials of the Nigeria Customs Service from Ikeja, backed by military men, raided all the filling stations in Idiroko in the dead of the night, towing away fully laden petroleum tankers to the Military baracks in Owode. The total number of fully laden petroleum tankers moved away to the Military baracks in Owode was 19 while another five fully laden petroleum tankers were towed to the Customs formation here in Idiroko,” he sad.
“The Customs officials led by one ACG Amajan started looking for buyers for the petroleum products. It was after the petroleum marketers discovered that the Customs were about selling off the petroleum products and auctioning off the trucks that they contacted me and a case was instituted in court.”