Economic Sabotage: Seme Customs Intercepts 400 Bags of Beans, Premium Motor Spirit, Others
Amid an all time high level of food shortages across the country, the Seme/Krake Border Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, has intercepted 400 bags of Nigerian beans being smuggled out of the country to neighbouring countries, the Customs Area Controller, Seme/Krake Border Command, Comptroller Timi Bomodi, has said.
Making the disclosure to Journalists earlier today, the CAC decried the act as unpatriotic and the height of economic
sabotage at a time where millions of Nigerians are hungry and in need of food.
Bomodi also stated that while legal exportation of food should be promoted to increase foreign earnings for the country, smuggling defrauds the government and the citizens of Nigeria.
As such, the Area Controller shared that the items would be kept at the Command’s warehouse while the Command awaits the directive of the National Management of Customs for the distribution, through auction, of the seized items to make it available to the public at considerably reduced cost.
“We do know that in recent times we have had challenges in the country as regards the illegal movement of grains given our peculiar situation with food stuffs and the shortages that is being experienced country wise.
“A few days ago, these bags of beans were intercepted at one of our exit points in the attempt of wanting to take them out. My Officers were alive to their duties and promptly made these arrest and moved them to our enforcement unit.
“The directive is that onceheadquarters have given a go ahead, these items would be moved to the market where they would be sold at current market prices. We would be discounting for inflation because ordinarily, these things shouldn’t be leaving the country when we have a food crisis.
“We must ensure that that which is being produced within Nigeria is used up within Nigeria. The citizens of this country comes first and the government of the day is prioritizing the needs of the people,” he said.
In the same vein, the Service intercepted over 400×30 liters of premium motor spirit, over 140 packs of human and animal pharmaceuticals and over 100 wraps of Cannabis Sativa.
“We have over 400 gallons of premium motor spirit that was intercepted at one of the creeks here in Badagry. There was an attempt to move these things out by boat but based on the intelligence that was gathered, officers were able to deploy to one of these creeks and intercepted them.
“These packs of Cannabis Sativa were retrieved some from vehicles, some from boats, and we discovered that there is a trend in the movement of these items. Everytime you deploy new ways of stopping these people, they come with new tricks.
“Recently, we discovered that they try to use underage some of them in school uniforms to conceal some of these items. They also conceal them in drums specially built to accommodate the items.
“On this table we also have some pharmaceuticals of CS mix with codeine and we know that this is used for chesty cough but we also know that this item is used illegally by people. We have about 140 packages that were stopped at one of our points at the bush path.
Showcasing another drug, he said, “This is a controlled item too. It is supposed to be used by vetinarians. It is expired and is not supposed to find its way into the public domain. Any item that is controlled by an agency of government that people deliberately try to evade control on, you know that the don’t mean well for the society. We also have some packs of anti biotics”.
Speaking on the challenges encountered by officers of the Command, Bomodi pointed that the dynamic nature of smugglers means that officers must always be abreast with the current trends in smuggling in order to safeguard the nation.
“It’s a challenge with us that anytime they are tackled on land, they have the tendency to move to the water. We have limited capabilities on the water even though there are resources that are there.
“We are talking of a very wide body of water not just the creeks. We are talking about the whole Atlantic. It’s still difficult but we are ready to put all the resources we have at our disposal to ensure that practices of this nature are discouraged and discontinued.”
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