Officers and men of the Nigeria Customs Service Strike Force Team ‘A’ have intercepted pump action, locally fabricated pistol, live cartridges and other items worth Three Hundred and Ninety Million, One Hundred and Ninety-Eight Thousand Naira (N390,198,000).
The seizure is in continuation to suppress smuggling, prevent revenue loss within the Southwest Region and enforce Customs extant laws.
The Coordinator of the team,
Deputy Comptroller Mohammed Yusuf in a press briefing, gave a breakdown of the seizures as follows:
1500 x 50kg bags of Foreign Parboiled Rice, 839 bales of Used Clothes, 3,525 litres of Premium Motor Spirit, 900 bags of Cement; used to conceal rice
Other items seized are 1,670 Mumrite Tomato Paste, 500 Mumrite Sardine, Smuggled Vehicles, One (1) pump action, one (1) locally fabricated pistol and 14 live cartridges.
He said efforts to ensure that local industries are protected from unhealthy foreign competition require a strong partnership between operatives and members of the public.
“Our efforts at ensuring that the local industries are protected from unhealthy foreign competition and other forms of social security require a strong partnership between our operatives and members of the public in areas of information sharing and moral support”, he reiterated.
Deputy Comptroller Yusuf said the Strike Force Team ‘A’ also generated revenue to the sum of Seven Hundred and Forty-eight Million, Six Hundred and Seventy-nine Thousand, Three Hundred and Thirty-three Naira (N748,679,337) through documentary checks and issuance of demand notices on consignments that were found to have been short-paid.
The Coordinator stressed that “It is sad to note that some Nigerians would pay all duties and levies payable to the Customs authorities of other countries they import from, while on the other hand,
they make conscious efforts to evade such payments into the federal coffers”.
He appealed to importers and agents to be patriotic by making sincere declarations and paying their duties accurately even as the Yuletide period draws near.
“As we are in the last quarter of the year; approaching the yuletide period where recalcitrant traders and importers’ quest to make more profits through smuggling is
at its peak. I would use this opportunity to appeal to importers and agents to be patriotic by making sincere declarations and paying their duties accurately”, he explained.
The Coordinator of the team reiterated, that unpatriotic importers/agents culpable shall be dealt with by the dictates of the law.
“Let me use this medium to warn none compliant traders to desist from such;
because we have strategically mobilized and deployed our personnel to do the needful. Unpatriotic importers/agents culpable shall be dealt with by the dictates of the law”, he concluded.
