Stories By Ajibola Abayomi
Lagos —
The Federal operations Units (FoU) Zone A, Ikeja of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on Wednesday announced varied seizure put at N356, 205,050.78 9 (Three hundred and Fifty six million, two hundred and five thousand, fifty naira, seventy kobo).
The seized items according to the Controller General of FoU, Mohammed Uba included 11 used vehicles, 4227 bags of foreign parboiled rice, frozen poultry products, vegetable oil, Indian hemps, medicaments, used tyres and scraps metals.
Other items intercepted by the Customs include wet blue, electric cables, unprocessed wood, bales of used clothing and shoes.
Uba explained that his team trailed 3000 bags of rice and evacuated them from 10 houses along the waterside in Ere Village at Ado-Odo Local Government, Ogun state.
The 11 seized cars comprised two Lexus Jeep Gx460 and RX330, one Toyota Rav4, two Toyota Camry, 5 Mercedes Benz and one IVECO Truck (Tanker), ranging from 2007 t0 2013 models respectively.
The customs boss said the 11 assorted cars vehicles alone had a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N125, 403, 598.5.
Regretting that some importers were hell bent on flouting the laid down procedures he said a total of 14 containers were seized for false declaration and breech of customs law with the DPV of N104, 684,023.2.
“7 containers carried unprocessed wood, one container was carrying scrap metals and another one carrying wet blue for exports which all fall under export prohibition list.
“Two containers were carrying made in Nigeria cables but imported from China which was declared as electric distribution board and ballast.
Only God knows what would have happened if these products got into the market” Uba lamented.
He said 8 suspects were arrested in connection with seizures while in recent months the FoU had 12 trials at the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal and Federal High Court respectively, stating that three were criminal cases, 9 were civil cases and one was convicted and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.
Abdulaziz Yahaya Othman, a director at National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NAFDAC) and Matthias Chikwe, an Assistant Director of Standard Organization of Nigeria (SON) received the seized Indian hemps, medicaments and cables on behave of their agencies and promised further collaboration with the NCS.
