By Richards Adeniyi
The Seme area command of the Nigeria Customs Service said it has made various seizures of smuggled goods with a Duty Paid Value (DPV) of N12 million.
Disclosing this at the weekend, Controller of the command, Comptroller Muhammed Aliyu, said the seizures were made along the Seme border route based on intelligence.
He said the seizures include: 189 bags of rice, 300 gallons of vegetable oil, 324 pieces of textiles materials, 611 cartons of poultry product and 52 cartons of tomatoes among others.
Comptroller Aliyu said operational strategies put in place by the command in recent times have become a nightmare to smugglers who are always devising new strategies to beat operatives of the command.
In a statement, Public Relations Officer of the command, Taupyen Selechang, stated that the Controller assured said the command will continue to operate using the best strategies to suppress smuggling to the barest minimum.
He stressed that the command will continue the harvest of seizures from non-compliant stakeholders and smugglers who have refused to hid the clarion call of been patriotic in their trade transactions along the corridor.
He said, “The operational dynamics of the Seme command of the Nigeria Customs Service in recent times has become a nightmare to smugglers who are always devising new strategies to beat the operatives of the command.
“This is evident in the recent seizures made by the command despite the effort put in by the smugglers in reconstructing their means of conveyance for concealment and easy passage. It is therefore worthy of note that confrontation with the smugglers which hitherto used to be between officers and smugglers is a thing of the past.”
He commended the operational officers and enjoined them to be ethical and professional in the discharge of their statutory functions.
The Customs boss reiterated that the command would continue to sanitize the Seme border and remain a nightmare to smugglers in line with the service statutory mandate of revenue generation, suppression of smuggling, facilitation of legitimate trade and protecting the territorial integrity of the nation.