From George Onyejiuwa, Owerri
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone ‘C’, Owerri, says it has impounded smuggled goods worth over N3 billion within the first six months of 2016 in its effort to check illicit trade in the zone.
This was even as 42 suspects have already been arrested in connection with the seizures made, while 25 persons are awaiting prosecution.
According to Comptroller, Mr. Haruna Mammudu, who disclosed this in a press statement signed by Public Relations Officer in Owerri, Assistant Superintendent of Customs, Ifeoma Onuigbo, eagle-eyed officers of Federal Operations Unit made a seizure of 169 items with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N1,379,772,517 and a total of N394,815,038 as an underpayment recovered within the period in question.
Mammudu revealed that the banned items were confiscated by the vigilant officers and men of the unit on the Benin, Calabar, Owerri, Enugu and Aba/Eleme axis within the zone. He further disclosed that items, which were packaged and concealed in such a manner as to deceive security agents on duty include 90 vehicles, 2,758 bags of 50kg rice, 4,160 pieces of used tyres, 1,337 cartons/sets of furniture and 625 cartons of fake drugs (medicaments).
Other seizures included 61 containers of log of wood; 2,600 pieces of imported school bags; 97 pieces of 14 stroke engine generator and used fridges; 3,550 cartons of foreign frozen poultry products; 992 bales of second hand clothes; 897 cartons of foreign detergents and creams as well as 167 pairs of footwear.
Haruna, while professing the preparedness of the NCS to tackle the scourge of smuggling of unauthorised goods into the country, expressed delight at the seizures profile recorded during the first six months of 2016 as against that made last year.
He, however, re-emphasised the dangers and implications inherent in the smuggling of illegal and unauthorised goods into the country, noting that while the ugly practice had continued to deal a devastating blow on the nation’s economy, many families had been ruined as a result of the dastardly unpatriotic practice.
The CAC therefore appealed to Nigerians still trapped in the illicit smuggling business to retrace their steps in their own interest, warning that the NCS is now better equipped, trained, motivated and reinvigorated to neutralise the antics of smugglers and to dislodge them wherever they hibernate to perpetrate their evil acts.