Men of the Ogun Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) have intercepted 101 trailers of foreign parboiled rice within a period of 13 months, the outgoing controller of the command, Dera Nnadi has said.
Nnadi disclosed this on Monday during a media briefing held at the Idiroko Area Command in Ipokia Local Government Area.
Nnadi explained that 96 trailer loads of rice, equivalent to 57,758 bags of 50kg each were seized in 2021, while five trailer loads, equivalent to 3,008 bags of rice were seized in January 2022.
“Also seized were poultry products, used tyres, second-hand clothing, dangerous drugs (tramadol and cannabis sativa), palm oil, petroleum products, assorted soaps, and cream.”
‘’ 1, 389 seizures were made within the period under review and the duty paid value of all the items seized amounted to N1.48 billion.
Nnadi added: ‘’It is worthy of note that the major source of revenue of the Command, which is import and export, have not been optimized since the closure of the land borders by the Federal Government.
“Fees collected from the auction sale of seized items, especially petroleum products, scrap metals, and other perishable items. A sum of N43,921,205.50 was collected as revenue from the auction sales seized petroleum products and scrap metals.’’