By Oyeniyi Iwakun
Smugglers may have encountered yet another waterloo as about 917 cartons of poultry products with the Duty Paid Value of N5,502,000 suspected to be smuggled en-route the Seme border was destroyed yesterday by the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone “A”, Ikeja, Lagos of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
The contrabands was intercepted on Saturday 19th and Sunday 29th, May 2018 around 6:44pm and 2:43pm respectively along Ijora, Seven-Up axis, Lagos by the Rapid Response Team led by Jack Okpabi, a Chief Superintendent of Customs and Officer in-charge of the Lagos, Roving team, of the federal, Operations Unit, FOU, Zone A, Ikeja according to the command’s spokesman, Mr. Jerry Attah.
While fielding questions from MMS Plus after the exercise, Mr. Attah explained that the officers were able to track down the vehicles conveying the product based on intelligence gathered from reliable source.
He explained futher that it was necessary to destroy the smuggled products in the presence of journalist so that it would serve as deterrence to others who would want to indulge in such illegal act.
“It is a usual exercise that we destroy them once this kind of product is intercepted. We want Nigerians to know that the FOU Zone “A”, Ikeja under the leadership of Comptroller Muhammed Uba Garba and Hameed Ali, the Comptroller General, NCS will not relent in our efforts toward suppressing and bringing smuggling to its barest minimum.
Recall, that the command has been at the forefront of anti-smuggling battle that has continued to give smugglers nightmares and which has led to series of seizures running into billions of naira accruable revenues that could have escaped the federal government’s purse.
