OGUN CUSTOMS TO BEGIN HOUSE RAID OF SMUGGLED GOODS
“I assure you, the battle line has been drawn and we will continue to do our best. The officers are ready to go and seize any rice we found anywhere. Whether you put it in your house, Customs & Excise Management Act (CEMA) allows us to go there. If you put it in your warehouses, we are allowed by the law to storm there and raid it. On the road, on the footpaths, both on the unapproved roads, we are there. So, what I will advise them to do is to desist from smuggling and obey the law”.
Agbara while speaking on the volume of seizures made by the command, disclosed that a total of 6, 194 bags of rice being smuggled into the country were intercepted, with 395 kegs of vegetable oil weighing 25 litres each only in the month of August 2018.
He said, others included 7-bales of secondhand clothing; 340 kegs of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) popularly known as petroleum weighing 25-litres each; 45 cartons of frozen poultry products as well as imported juice all with a Duty Payable Value (DPV) of over N382 million.
Agbara said, “we know the implications of what smuggling of rice portends for the economy. We all have junior ones who are all looking for jobs. If we allow smuggling, we’re creating jobs in Thailand, India and Singapore. So here, we are determined more than ever before, to ensure that these rice do not come in.
The customs boss said the command also participated in a joint operation which led to the seizure of a-yet-to-be-ascertained-large quantity of petroleum product (PMS) in a creek at Ijoun village in the Yewa North local government area of the state.
He recalled that the smugglers had wanted to take advantage of the Eid-El-Kabir festival to perpetrate their illicit trade but ran into the waiting hands of the anti-smuggling operatives.
