Federal High Court in Abuja has awarded damages of over N5.5 billion against the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) and the Chairman of Nigerian Customs Service Board (NCSB) for their unlawful seizure of 90 containers of rice imported by a firm, Maggpiy Trading, Tinapa Free Trade Zone (TFZE).
In its suit filed on March 18, 2017, Maggpiy accused officials of the NCS of invading and sealing up its warehouse in the Tinapa Free Trade Zone (TFTZ), Calabar, the Cross River State capital, containing over 90 containers of rice stored in air-tight containers.
The plaintiff said officials of the NCS also allegedly stole part of the seized rice and detained its 40 trucks, containing 317 transit containers of rice destined for the TFTZ without lawful justification for 120 days on Onne-Port Harcourt road.
In a judgment on Wednesday, Justice Inyang Ekwo upheld the plaintiff’s claims and held that the first and second respondents – NCS and the Chairman of NCSB – acted unlawfully and without any justification in law.
Justice Ekwo rejected the defence raised by the NCS and the Chairman of NCSB and their attempt to justify their actions.
He said: “I have studied the document. I cannot find anywhere it is made applicable to free trade zones, which both parties have agreed is a country within a country.”
The judge also rejected some circular tendered by the NCS to justify their action.
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Justice Ekwo held that not only were most of the circulars made after the plaintiff’s rice consignment was seized on March 18, 2017, the defendants failed to show the law and orders pursuant to which the circulars were issued.
“The circular made on March 30, 2017, declaring free trade zones as land borders cannot apply to this case because it does not have a retrospective effect.
“Therefore, the circulars, made after the plaintiff had imported the rice and relied upon by the first and second defendants do not apply to this case,” the judge said.
Justice Ekwo also faulted the first and second defendants’ argument that they were exempted, under the Customs and Excise Management Act, from any liability and prosecution while applying the provisions of the law.
The judge said such exemption only applies where officials of the NCS are exercising the power granted by the law – the Customs and Excise Management Act,
He added: “It has not been shown to this court the provisions of the said Act that authorise any of the Customs officials to enter and seal a business premises in a free trade zone.
“In that case, the foray of the first and second defendants into the territory of the Tinapa Free Trade Zone and Resort, which is not a territory of the first and second defendants, and which was not to enforce the provisions of the Nigerian Export Processing Zone Act or any regulation thereof, was illegal and unlawful.
“The argument by the first and second defendants that the plaintiff was importing its rice through the land border was questionable, because the containers they seized were merely being transported on land – from Onne Sea Port to the Tinapa Free Trade Zone and Resort.
“The containers were, therefore, in transit between one sea port and another. And, being in transit, they cannot be interpreted as land border importation.”
The judge described as infantile the argument that the plaintiff, in importing rice, acted outside its operating licence which was for the plaintiff to trade in food and beverages in Tinapa Free Trade Zone.
He said: “Another intriguing part of the defendants action, during the course of this proceedings, is the discovery that, when stocks were taken, upon the unsealing of the warehouse by the first and second defendants, 19,421 of 50 kilogrammes bags and 1,639 of 25 kilogrammes of the seized rice consignment have been pilfered by officers of the first and second defendants.
“The first and second defendants offered no defence on this issue nor countered the evidence of the plaintiff.
“This, in my opinion, is a brazen act of treating the proceedings before the court with contempt, apart from the reprehensible theft that the act of the first and second defendants represents.”
The judge granted all the reliefs by the plaintiff and awarded specific and general in damages in favour of the plaintiff, and against the first and second defendants, in the amount estimated at N3,805,638,950 and $4,796,550.
Although the National Security Adviser (NSA) was sued as the third defendant, Justice Ekwo said the plaintiff made out no case against him.
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