There are indications that the on-going investigation by the Nigeria Customs Service into serial importation of arms and ammunitions into the country through the Tin Can Island Port has led the arrest of two more suspects.
Disclosing this in Lagos last week while fielding questions from journalists at the Yaba College of Technology, Lagos, Deputy Comptroller in charge of enforcement at Tin Can, Mr Dera Nnadi noted that all the other cases of arms importation are still ongoing in the court.
Although he refused to offer further explanation, the DC enforcement said "the cases we have in court include that of Great James, the first container of arms that was seized, all the arms containers are in court"
"As I speak with you, I also have two people in detention now over something related to that, I won't break it for now, I want the Controller to be the one to announce it. The arrest was made yesterday (Wednesday); the people (suspects) are there".
Shipping Position Daily recalls that the Tin Can Island Command intercepted 2,671 pump action rifles imported from Turkey
in 2017. The seizures were made in four tranches at the same port within a period of eight months.
Nnadi said since the unfortunate incident two years ago, the command now beams extra light on imports emanating from certain countries that are notorious for armful imports.
He also revealed that the command have since departed from manual enforcement and now operates electronic enforcement system.
Speaking further, he said "initially when I came to Tin Can Island Port, most of our operations were manual, but the first thing I did when I came was to ensure that we depart from the manual way of enforcement and apply the e-enforcement"
"Now, I don't need to bear arms to chase you all around, what I try to do now is to profile you right from the manifest level, most of the Tramadol we seized were done like this, once I see a particular country of origin, my antenna springs up, I start suspecting that something may be wrong, I may not be 100% sure all the time, but at least, 70% of the time I am correct and I make seizures, these are also what we did about the guns we seized in recent time, we also used the same process, it was through profiling"
Nnadi said the command is working towards voluntary compliance, whereby its stakeholders would comply on their own without being compelled.
"As a matter of fact, people celebrate seizures, but for me, as many seizures as you make is an indication of the poor level of compliance, if you make fewer seizure, it is an indication that compliance is high"
"I have one of the most challenging jobs in that command, I try to make effort at facilitating trade, l also try to make effort to ensure compliance, most of the time, the two don't go together", he said.
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