The Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone ‘A’ of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said that it has received the nine vehicles which were used to smuggle rice into the country from the Nigerian Police Force, even as it lauded the interagency relationship existing between the service and the police.
The outgoing Customs Area Controller in charge of the Unit, Comptroller Muhammed Uba, who said this last week at a press briefing in Ikeja, Lagos said that while Customs officers were pursing the vehicles, the smugglers drove against the traffic, but were later arrested by the Police.
He told Shipping Position Daily that the Police were able to hand over the vehicles to the Customs because it is the constitutional responsibility of the customs to intercept smuggled items.
Explaining, he said: “Behind you is something very interesting that we have been pursuing and it has yielded results, they are nine in number. It could be recalled that there was a time in the cause of our anti-smuggling operations, these nine vehicles were intercepted along the way while our officers were pursuing the vehicles, they drove against the traffic and they were arrested by the police. The vehicles and the content inside, we wrote to the police consistently and finally they are here, due to the inter agency relationship between the police and the customs, the police has officially handed the vehicles back to us, because it is our constitutional responsibility to intercept smuggled items. Having contributed their quota in the fight against smuggling because it is not done by an agency alone, it is a collective fight. So we will continue to relate with other sister agencies in the fight illicit and illegal trade”.
He added that last week, the unit intercepted 17 exotic vehicles with Duty Paid Value of N384, 291, 251.94.
Among the detained vehicles were: 7 Toyota Land Cruiser Jeep (2015-2018), 4 Toyota Haice Bus (2017), 2 Toyota Coaster bus (2017) and 4 Toyota Camry (2014). He explained that four of the vehicles were intercepted along Ijebu Ode Expressway, while 13 were evacuated from House Plot 1, Akintailor Close, Allen Avenue Ikeja based on information .
He explained that: “They are part of the 17 vehicles that have been detained, 10 of them for the purpose of paying additional money some are outright seizure for non-complaint with government regulations”.
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