Even as the yuletide season approaches, the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone ‘A’ of the Nigeria Customs Service in Ikeja Lagos has called on Nigerians with information on smuggling activities to come forward with it, assuring that they would be well compensated.
Area Controller of the unit, Compt Muhammed Uba stated this last week at a meeting in his office with members of the Maritime Reporters Association of Nigeria (MARAN).
He noted that as the year is coming to an end, customs is aware of the desperation by smugglers to step up their activities. He however assured that the unit was ready to also step up information gathering from informants, popularly called ‘kelebes’.
He disclosed that there is an existing policy to compensate anyone who would come forward with information on smuggling activities; he said that this policy has been working well and yielding results for the unit.
He categorized the informants, saying that some might be giving information as patriotic citizens, while others do so for economic and revenge purposes. He also charged journalists as watchdog of the society not to hesitate to report any officer found doing anything untoward at the ports.
Speaking further on how the unit gets information from the seaport and land borders on importers’ intention to cheat the government, he said “You may be offloading your container and doing examination, a loader or somebody might be an informant unknown to you, you only sees him as a labourer. Look at the 661 pump action riffles that were arrested early this year, it was based on information”, he revealed.
Talking more on the reward system for informants, the Controller said: “If your information is for economic reason and you would not give us until we have paid you, please give us, there is an economic policy of the government, although it takes a long process because it has to be approved”
“But at our own level, we usually initiate, because if we decide to follow the bureaucratic process, the information would be belated and the person would go away ,what we are avoiding would happen, so along this line we would pay you, even if we don’t have enough money enough to pay you, we can reach an agreement to pay you instalmentally, it yields results”
“It is along this line that we keep on calling on members of the press and patriotic informants, we have them all over, whatever your intentions might be as an informant, whether you are patriotic or economic”.
On the anti-smuggling efforts put in place by the unit to tackle end of the year rush by smugglers, Compt Uba said that officers have been placed on red alert at every flash points where smuggling activities take place and places that are not so common for smuggling.
According to him, no country in the world has been able to root out smuggling entirely; he said what could only be done is to make sure that smuggling is fought to the barest minimum.
“We have redoubled our efforts and all the flashpoints known to us, we have made sure that they have been reinforced. Even the soft target areas where we thought smugglers cannot take, we have placed officers on standby to make sure that no government money is lost and no smuggled goods are allowed to come in by virtue of the fact that we are not on ground”
“We are not going to be remarkably different, we would only make sure that we improve and get information, we have logistics and we are not unaware that at times like this, activities spring up and people take life like a do or die affair. It is in an attempt to meet up that they sometimes end up in jail, we are aware of all these and we are prepare”
Compt Uba also reiterated that the Federal Government is unrelenting on the ban on rice and vehicles importation through land borders.
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