The Comptroller of Oyo/Osun Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, Adamu Abdulkadir on Thursday disclosed that six vehicles, loaded with 500 bags of foreign parboiled rice have been intercepted by the command’s officers in an overnight operation.
Also seized were six vehicles being used by the smugglers to convey the bags of rice to an unknown destination.
This was exactly a week after showcasing the efforts of command officers of the Nigeria Customs Service, Oyo/Osun Area Command, when almost N5 billion was generated as revenue in January this year alone, in efforts to curb smuggling activities.
Abdulkadir put the Duty Paid Value (DPV) of the intercepted bags of rice at N22.329 million, while the seized vehicles had a Duty Paid Value of N7,138,665 million.
Speaking during a press briefing at the command headquarters in Ibadan, Oyo State, the Comptroller told journalists that the seizure was made as a result of intelligence gathered.
He said that this made the command officers move to the bush where the bags of rice were hidden by the conveyers, in readiness to use the dead of the night to transport them to intended destinations.
He added that the command officers were joined by the Strike Force, Federal Operations Unit (FOU) and the Border Drill, at the targeted bush between Oyo and Kwara States.
He, however, said that smugglers escaped from the bush, probably after they were notified by their informants of the approaching Customs operatives.
Abdulkadir decried a situation whereby unrepentant smugglers dared the law, despite warnings that the battle would be taken to their doorsteps in an operation code-named ‘Operation Fish Out.’
He said that the operation was designed to make Oyo and Osun states unbearable for smugglers and economic saboteurs.
Advising people in the two states to invest in legitimate businesses, to avoid loss of hard-earned money, he pointed out that the federal government had set up various empowerment and career development programmes to encourage youths as well as small and medium scale enterprises (SMEs).
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