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peratives of the Western Marine Command(WMC) of the Nigeria Customs Service now hire wooden boats to convey contraband items from all designated outstations to its base in Coconut Ibafon axis in Lagos ,investigations have revealed.
The command since the appointment of Comptroller General of Customs Col.Hameed Ali (rtd) ,has suffered setbacks in the area of infrastructure that would have enabled officers and men of the units to perform better in combating smuggling to a standstill at sea. According to sources,there are close to 2,000 of 50kg bags of rice awaiting water mode of transportation from Badagry to the Command due to dearth of patrol boats in possession of the officers.It was gathered that officers and men at any station would source for fund to hire wooden boats to convey the commodities to the command.
Sources disclosed that the seized bags of rice when conveyed from the various outstations to the command, spent close to two days at sea.
Checks further confirmed that, officers and men deployed to some of the outstations would have improved on the seizure of contraband but lack of logistics have made the operatives at sea to be handicap.
Grassroots Publishers News Online also gathered that in the process of conveying the seized bags of rice to base,some of items are soaked with water which in turn made some the commodities to rot away before the normal expiration date. Some of the outstations that the seized items are transported to the command include,Badagry, Idi roko, Seme, Yekeme etc.
Apart from smuggled bags of rice which have littered the command in Lagos ,other items like cannabis ,kegs of petroleum products,scrap metals ,vegetable oil and second hand clothing ,face similarly challenges of transportation before arriving the command.
According to our findings , personnel of the Customs cannot man the creeks effectively and actively due to limited resources at their disposal. “The situation has equally affected the morale and psyche of officials deployed to such posts”, a source who prefer anonymity lamented.
Findings further revealed that apart from the challenges faced by the western command, situation at the eastern command is worst in terms of combing creeks to reduce smuggling to the barest minimum.
Currently , the eastern marine command has failed to failed to live up to its mandates in terms of combating smuggling activities from Cameroon and some other flashpoints where smuggling activities take place.
Further investigations disclosed recently, that the Nigerian Navy had handed close to 1,000 bags of rice to the eastern command of Customs which in a normal circumstances should be the responsibilities of the former.
Attempts by our correspondent to get the Public Relations Officer ,Western Marine Command prove abortive as his lines were not reachable as at the time of filing the report.But interesting to note also was the fact that most of the officers lack accommodation problems ,as some of the personnel who were sighted by our correspondent, were sleeping at the church, while some were spotted at the abandoned buildings inside the command.