By Oluyinka Onigbinde
Investigation carried out by Shipping Position Daily newspaper has revealed that despite heightening hunger and economic crisis currently bedevilling the country, thousands of seized bags of rice, beans and other food items are currently rotting away at customs warehouses and commands.
Shipping Position Daily gathered that many of the customs warehouses are filled to the brim with perishable foodstuffs and drinks including vegetable oil that were seized by some of the commands.
Our correspondent who visited some of the commands for press briefings and other assignments in the past few months confirmed that many of the seized items are currently rotting away at the warehouses.
Also, checks by our correspondent confirmed that the value of the seized items in Lagos alone is over N2 billion.
For instance, our correspondent who visited the Seme Customs warehouse recently, was informed that the warehouse there is filled to the brim with seized bags of rice and vegetable oil, and different brands of fruit juice.
Specifically, in March, the Seme customs command announced that it had seized 5,568 bags of rice, 294 cartons of frozen poultry products, 798 cartons of tomato paste, three cartons of sugar, 30 cartons of Nescafe, 19 cartons of non-alcoholic wine among others, with duty paid value worth over N90 million naira.
Also in June, the command seized 139 cartons of soft drinks and other consumables valued at N1.48billion from smugglers.
Our correspondent was also informed that recently, the acting Customs Area Controller in charge of the Federal Operations Unit, Zone A in Ikeja, Hussein Ejibunu, while giving the half-year report of the unit, told journalists that between January and June 2022, the unit seized 45, 928 bags of foreign parboiled rice of 50kg each which was equivalent to 77 trailer-loads.
Apparently overwhelmed by the huge seizures of food items, Ejibunu was quoted to have said that, “the major challenge we are having is lack of space. If you want to confirm what I am saying now, someone should go to our former correspondent office. There, you will find out that there is rice everywhere. The only place that does not have rice is where we are sitting now and this is the only place we have our meetings. I have written and requested, and the CGC has promised me that. We will do constructive warehousing that can warehouse a whole lot of seized goods.”
Reacting to the seizures in a chat with our correspondent, the Chief Executive Officer, Centre for the Promotion of Private Enterprise, Dr Muda Yusuf, advised the government to see how they could use perishable seized goods for economic interventions.
“If you have seizures that are perishable, I think the appropriate thing to do is to see how to use them for some social interventions. There are so many areas in our society that are in need of food or so many of those things that are perishable. We should not allow those things to get rotten before we dispose of them”, he advised.
He advised that a time frame should be given for these commodities to be disposed of, adding that the Customs was not doing enough in the area of ensuring quick disposal of these goods.
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“Once it has been established that these are seizures and they are not likely to return to the owners, then there should be a time frame to dispose them to meet some social needs in the society. It could even be the social investment programme that the government is doing. There should be a way, rather than just keep them with the Customs and struggle with space. The thing is rotting away. So, there should be a way and time frame to dispose of these,” he said
However, while reacting to the development, the National Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, Mr. Timi Bomodi explained that the procedure for the disposal of the seized food items is being delayed by the Court. He explained that the service is awaiting the condemnation of the seized items by the court.
According to him, “there are procedures for giving out seized times, anytime something is seized it needs to be ‘condemned’ in the court, if the court has not condemned it, it can’t be given out, a lot of these things are still in court awaiting condemnation until the court condemns it before we can talk about giving it out.
“Secondly, your statement is too general, when you say they are rotting away; its not entirely correct, a lot of them are being kept properly and warehoused, but you know like all things that are perishable; food is one of them, some of them can be bad, but not all. So like I said we are awaiting condemnation by the court”, he said.
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