The Seme Border Command of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) generated N33.9 million in December 2013, from duty paid for seized goods.
The officer in charge of operations of the command, Assistant Controller of the Command, Assistant Controller Emmanuel Nkemdirim disclosed this to our correspondent in Lagos recently.
Nkemdirim said among the seized goods were 2,300 bags of rice, 1,037 cartons of frozen turkeys, textile materials, vegetable oil as well as other prohibited goods.
He said the command combined intelligence, experience with enforcement capabilities to increase their operational profile and promised to redouble their efforts this year.
The officer in Charge of Operations noted that the smugglers thought that the route could be used as hide-out or escape for economic saboteurs to carryout their nefarious activities by averting payment for the value of seized goods during the yuletide in 2013 was outrageous, compared to seizures made in any other months, describing Seme boarder as the busiest boarder post in the country with a high degree of legitimate economic activities.
He said despite challenges of being used as route for smugglers, but that their efforts had sanitized the area from illegal activities.
In his words, “You are aware that the service is undergoing reforms and the focus is to enhance cargo delivery. You also know that we are saddled with the responsibility of collecting revenue as well as enforcing prohibition laws and its also our responsibility to facilitate trade and compliance issues. Hence, the anti-smuggling campaign is going on in various ways as you can see lately, and we make seizures of items that are in the prohibition list and other that came in through contravention of laid down orders.”
Nkemdirim explained that seizures were made when violation of import prohibition laws are dictated just like textiles, that are not supposed to come in, “if you bring it in, we will seize them,” he said.
The essence of this is to let people know that for our economy to grow, attitudinal change is needed and people should understand these items will ruin our economy if they are brought in,” the officer-in-charge further said.
It would be recalled that playing the big brother role in West Africa, Nigeria gave her Benin Republic neighbours a red carpet, when she promised to open her border for the importation of some goods manufactured in factories at the Republic of Benin, which gave birth to the official launching of the joint committee on commerce, having Benin Republic and Nigeria as members, with the then minister of state for finance , Mrs Esther Nenadi Usman as chairperson.
The committee was mandated to work out modality where some Nigeria Customs officials would be sent to monitor and take stoke of goods manufactured in factories in Cotonue.
The Tide correspondent in Lagos gathered that the Republic of Benin and their manufacturers have not taken the advantage of this offers, owing to some reasons which may not be unconnected with manufacturers, preference for smuggling, evading duty or bureaucratic bottleneck.