By Godfrey Bivbere
The Federal Operations Unit, FOU Zone A of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, has said it has secured eight convictions of persons involved in smuggling while 48 others were on various stages of persecution.
The Unit also disclosed that it impounded smuggled goods with Duty Paid Value, DPV, worth about N746 million.
Briefing newsmen in Lagos, Customs Area Controller, CAC of the Unit, Hussein Ejibunu, said the Unit saved the Federal Government about N66.7 million that would have been lost through various infractions such as; under-valuation, under-payments, and wrong classification.
According to him, “This Unit, through the Federal High Court, had secured eight convictions during the last 10 months, while 48 different cases are at various stages of prosecution. The chart below shows the convictions.
“In April, we made seizures worth a total duty paid value (DPV) of N746.2 million, while 10 suspects were arrested during the period under review.”
Ejibunu said the breakdown of the seizures made were 8,309 X 50kg bags of foreign parboiled rice (equivalent to 14 trailer loads), 2,428 X 25 liters of Premium Motor Spirit, PMS; 221 cartons of foreign frozen poultry, and 486 parcels (262kg) of Indian hemp.
According to him, other are four units of foreign used vehicles, 111 pieces of used tyres, 10 bales of used clothing’ and eight sacks of used shoes.
“Successes recorded by this Unit in the suppression of desperate measures for economic criminality would not have been possible without the deployment of logistics support provided by the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali, (retd), and his management team in the battle to protect our national economic interest.”
Source: Vanguard