Barely one week after he assumed office as the Customs Area Controller of the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone “C” Owerri of the Nigeria Customs Service, Comptroller Haruna Mamudu has spurred officers and men of the unit to confiscate a number of illegally imported items with an overall Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N145,165,705
The seizures which occurred on the Benin Express Way, the Aba-Eleme –Port Harcourt Road and the Aba-Eleme axis include: 1,500 cartons of poultry products concealed with scaffolding irons, big empty drums and wheel barrows with a DPV of N21,000,000 and a truck load of 156 jumbo bales of second hand clothing with a DPV of N26,892,000
Also impounded was a truck load of fake and unregistered medicament comprising of 190 cartons of Tremadol, 10 bags of sodium lauryl sulphate, 30 bags of potassium Chloride, 10 bags fatty alcohol and 39 bags of sodium citrate, with a DPV of N87,298,105 as well as 1,700 pairs of shoes with a DPV of N2,778,000, 115 pieces of used tyres with DPV of #624,000 and assorted foreign soap/cosmetics with DPV of N6,573,600.
Comptroller Haruna Mamudu who disclosed this while briefing newsmen in Owerri on the seizures said that three suspects were also arrested.
The Area Controller also advised members of the public who are in the habit of consuming imported poultry products to purge themselves of this, stressing that the these consumables which are usually imported through Cotonou in Benin Republic and assumed to be cheap are preserved with lethal substances meant for preserving dead bodies which makes them harmful and unfit for human consumption.
“More so, some people use the smuggling of foreign poultry products for money laundering, but now the forex is no longer there,” he stated.
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