CAC, Seme Customs Command
[dropcap]F[/dropcap]or years, officers and men of the Nigerian Customs Service, NCS, at the land Border stations across the country have been very tolerant of the Economic Community of West African States , ECOWAS, Trade Liberalisation Schme, ETLS, goods as a way of boosting trade among member nations.
The deployment of Muhammed Uba Garba, by Hameed Ali, a retired Colonel and Comptroller General, Nigerian Customs Service, NCS, to Seme Command appears to have exposed most of the Commission member countries which may have taken advantage of the Nigerian large market to push repackaged made in Chni products into the country. The Command aggressive anti-smuggling officers under the close watch of Adahunse Rashid, a Deputy Comptroller and Head of the Enforcement Unit were said to have made a spectacular seizure of 14 cartons of Nitro femine soap smuggled into the country from the West African country of Ghana. Valuation experts put the duty paid Value, DPV, at about N169,855.00.
The smuggler may have been have been having his way over the years in smuggling the famine soap into the country and smiling to the bank over the years until luck ran out of him recently when the Command patrol team swooped on him in his hideout to dispossess the criminal element of the items. The Seme Customs Area Comptroller confirmed that femine soap are common in the Ghanaian market which may have forced the dealers to explore the Nigerian market. The seizure of the femine soap may exposed the Command Customs personnel to be more thorough in checking mating the approved ETLS goods entering the country going by the abuse of the scheme by me by member countries.
More worrisome was the Command patrol teams seizure of expired bags of foreign parboiled rice, an indication that most of the foreign rice shipped into the Republic of Benin Port of Cotonou but smuggled through illegal routes had expired . The Command had intercepted 13 bags of such expired foreign parboiled rice from smugglers in the Badagry Creeks and waterside axis. This should be source of worry to Mohammed Aliyu, Comptroller Federal Operations Unit, FOU, Zone A, as virtually all the patrol teams in the Command are now involved in making rice seizures from smugglers.
Only recently the Command Strike Force, Headed by Ahmed . A.. a Superintendent was said to said to have transferred three trucks loaded with rice intercepted from different locations in Ogun and Oyo states. The large quantities of rice transferred by the Strike Force team to the Command premises may have added up to the over 25,000 bags of ”50” bags of which the Command had made in the last three months.
There are fears that substantial quantities of the ”50” Kg bags of foreign rice may have expired which inform the reason why experts from the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration, NAFDAC,should be sent to the Command to assess the intercepted foreign parboiled rice before Ali, the Coustoms Comptroller General, give approval for the allocation of the items to the Internally Dislaced Person, IDP, Camps, in the north easternstates of Adamawa, Borno and Yobe including the IDP Camp in the south-south state of Edo.
Maritime watchers believe that this is the only way to avoid supplying the IDP Camps or Orphanage homes expired rice in the guise of giving assistance to them. Perhaps, what should gladden Ali, the Customs Comptroller General’s heart , in the seizures made by the Command Operations and Lagos Roving team, Headed by Riks Lura, a Chief Superintendent of Customs, CSC, regarded in Customs circles as fearless, was seizure by the team of 347 cartons of Codeine, a prohibited Pharmaceutical produced should into the country through the seaport valued by experts at about N46 million.
Another major seizure from a private location in lagos was a smuggled bullet proof, 1919, model, from the Republic of Benin valued at about N140 million. The Duty on the bullet proof vehicle alone, according a Valuation expert was N49 million while the Duty Paid Value, DPV, was 189 million.
This is in addition the seizure by the team of 820 sacks of donkey skin in a warehouse allegedly operated by a Chinese Company who has agents all over the country sourcing for the animal skin which are used for the production of Pharmaceutical products for curing of High Blood Pressure, HBP, and types of sickness , for export to the Asian country. According to Valuation experts, the market value of the intercepted animal skins loaded in a ”40” Container was about N1.9 billion. Aliyu may have sent a warning signal Chinese Donkey skin agents that the game is up as they would never have any opportunity of exporting t the animal skin to their country with the assistance of their Customs Collaborators on the export Seat to their home country, China.
The seizure of the animal skin by Riks led Operations and Lagos Roving team indifferent parts of Lagos and Oyo state, may have forced many of the Chinese donkey skin agents and the Nigerian dealers to go underground for fear of falling into the waiting hands of the team personnel who have a network of informants.
The FOU, Zone A, Customs Comptroller have been convinced that he had made adequate seizures of different merchandise goods including exotic vehicles and a bullet proof, 1919 model, that when Joseph Attah, a Deputy Comptroller and Customs Spokesperson in-charge of the government revenue generating agency, sponsored Customs Duty proposed to do a coverage of his activities in the Command in the last two months, he did not hesitate in giving him the approval.
On Thursday, July 4, 2019, Attah, and his Customs Duty Crew members, from Abuja, were at the Command where he handed them a long list of the seizures made by the Command worth over N14 billion. The Customs image maker was said to have left for another Command with Lagos a fulfilled person that coming to Lagos to do part of his official work was not a waste.
Many believe that the FOU, Zone A, Comptroller, is using Attah, as a link to sell himself to Ali, the Customs Comptroller General because of his direct access to him as Customs Image maker.
Culled from The Value News