The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Federal Operations Unit, Zone ‘A’ on Thursday said the unit secured eight convictions of suspected smugglers for various smuggling offenses in the last 10 months through the Federal High Court.
The Unit also informed that 48 other cases are at various stages of prosecution during the same period.
Briefing newsmen during a press briefing in Lagos, the acting Area Controller of the Unit, Deputy Comptroller Hussein Kehinde, said the Unit also intercepted 2,428 kegs of 25 litres of premium motor spirit (PMS) and other contraband worth N746.157 million
Giving a breakdown of the seizures he said they include: 8,309 X 50kg bags of foreign parboiled rice, equivalent to 14 trailer loads, 221 cartons of foreign frozen poultry, 486 parcels (262 kg) of Indian hemp, four units of foreign used vehicles, 111 pieces of used tyres, 10 bales of used clothing and eight sacks of used shoes.
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According to him, the Unit in its continuous quest to prevent revenue loss through various infractions such as; under-valuation, under-payments, and wrong classification, the sum of N66.726 million was collected following the issuance of demand notices to defaulters.
“While the smugglers planned to take us unaware during the religious festivities, our round-the-clock patrols were sustained and backed with intelligence even during the public holidays. Interestingly, the outcome of our unrelenting onslaught against smuggling is the remarkable drop evident in the number of seizures recorded with zero casualties.
“We want to reiterate that it pays for importers, exporters, haulage operators, and their agents to operate within the ambit of the law because doing otherwise places them at risk of losing their investments and facing prosecution as enshrined in the Customs and Excise Management Act (CEMA),” he added.
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