NAN – The Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone“A’’ of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) says it has intercepted 205 seizures of smuggled goods with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N122.5 million.
The Public Relations Officer of the command, Mr Uche Ejesieme, disclosed this while speaking with newsmen on Thursday in Lagos.
“The unit was able to effect 205 different seizures of assorted, offending and prohibited items with a Duty Paid Value of N122, 521,030.
“Some of the seized items include; foreign parboiled rice, 53 different seizures in different locations and those different seizures translated into 3,003 bags of 50kg parboiled rice, with a Duty Paid Value of N19, 501,306.
“For smuggled frozen poultry products, we had 45 different seizures from different locations translating into 6,713 cartoons of the product with a Duty Paid Value of N36, 250,000.20.
“We also had seizures of vehicles coming from unapproved routes and some of them trying to invade payment of appropriate taxes and levy and in that regard we intercepted 46 of such vehicles.
“Thirty-three of them being pure Tokunbo (Used) and 65 of them regard as scraps and the DPV total N36, 220,500.’’
Ejesieme said that the command also made 61 seizures of general merchandise such as, new and used textile materials,foot wear, vegetable oil, mosquito insecticides, spaghettis, soaps, wine and used tyres.
According to him, the DPV of the general merchandise seizure is valued at over N30.5 million.
He stated that the controller in charge of the command, Turaki Adamu, had assured that the unit would not relent in its efforts to rid the area of smugglers
“The man at the helm of affairs, Comptroller Turaki Usman Adamu, believes in ensuring that the unit remain on top of it statutory mandate of suppressing smuggling and facilitating trade.
“We have waged a relentless war on smugglers and our focus remains identifying illegal entering points and the essence of that is to ensure that we dismantle them and by extension cutting their supply chains.
“This is what we have been doing over time, we are not relenting, we are not resting on our oars and the assurance is that we are beginning to have collaboration and support with members of the public.
“Recently, we revived this our concept of customs community relationship.
“It is a platform whereby we engage stakeholders, trying to sensitise and educate them on the dangers of smuggling, particularly those of them living at those fringes of the border areas.
“So that they will be well acquainted with the effect of smuggling to the nation’s economy and also to their lives.’’
He urged Nigerians to support the service with useful information to curb the activities of smugglers.
