About 1399 bags of rice have been intercepted by the Nigerian Customs Services (NCS) at the Katsina/ Daura borders, the Comptroller, Federal Operations Unit (FOU), Zone B of the NCS, Kaduna, Amade Abdul has disclosed.
He disclosed this yesterday while briefing newsmen on the activities of the zone within the first quarter of this year, saying some of the smugglers now use motorbikes to ferry bags of rice in piece meal into the waiting trailer at the border posts before conveying them to the hinterland for sale.
According to him, the products are from Vietnam, India, Pakistan and other countries and were intercepted along Katsina/Daura areas of Katsina State.
He said the effort of the Customs in seizing the rice was in line with the Federal Government’s zero tolerance for importation of rice through illegal routes, pointing out that only one port was designated for importation of rice into the country with 100 percent duty and levy charges on such importation.
He added that any other route’s aside the federal government designated port should be considered illegal, and rice, including other goods imported in large quantity through such route are regarded as contraband which are liable to seizure.
“ If you put empty trailer on this side of the border in Nigeria, and you have ten motorbikes to load the trailer, each motorbike will carry five bags, and it crosses, and it goes back to carry more, and before the end of the day, the trailer will be loaded. But because of our network and strength along the border, there is nobody again that is bold to load a truck and cross, but little drops make big ocean. And so we are working hard, motorcycles are being seized. Within one week we sized 489 bags of rice through this little method of moving bags of rice by smugglers.
“If people know that they are doing the right thing they will not camouflage, we have 50kg of rice that are stored in 100kg bags, and they present them as beans, as gari, as cassava and are being loaded, but the extra vigilance of officers were able to detect them and brought them out. The marked 50kg rice came out as 50kg rice instead of 100kg beans.
“For the past three weeks of action, we have had a total of 91 seizures, and this include vehicles, textiles materials, fake assorted drugs from illegal routes.
“And more importantly we seized 1399 bags of rice which as directed by the Headquarters that we should have zero tolerance for incoming of rice, and for the three weeks we were able to rake in 1399 bags of rice.
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