Recent reports of the successful passage of contraband or substandard goods through the Customs into the country call for concern. Operatives of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) on January 27, 2017, confiscated 661 pieces of pump action rifles illegally imported into the country from China. The weapons were packed in 49 boxes and concealed withRead More
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Recent reports of the successful passage of contraband or substandard goods through the Customs into the country call for concern.
Operatives of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) on January 27, 2017, confiscated 661 pieces of pump action rifles illegally imported into the country from China. The weapons were packed in 49 boxes and concealed with steel doors and other goods in a 40ft container. The discovery was made at the Mile 2 area of Lagos, well after the goods had passed through the Customs.
A former governor is also in the net of the security agencies after a huge cache of sophisticated weapons were found packed in his cars.
On February 25, 2017, officials of the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) raided a warehouse in the Satellite Town area of Lagos where about two million sub-standard tyres worth about N5 billion were discovered.
Director-General and Chief Executive, of SON, Osita Aboloma, who conducted journalists round the warehouse, described the tyres as “dead on arrival”, adding that allowing them to enter the market amounted to surreptitiously taking away the lives of millions of Nigerians.
“We have over 60 containers of tyres; actually stuffed tyres to be precise. Again, even if these (were) to be standard tyres, the fact that up to five of them were tucked into one, with operators using rods to separate them from one another when they reached Nigeria, the tyres (would) naturally become substandard”.
The seizures were effected after the goods had passed through the Customs clearance and were only confiscated after the law enforcement agencies acted on information provided by whistleblowers.
Flooding the country with such sophisticated weapons, dead tyres and other toxic contrabands would have worsened the already precarious security situation and carnage on our roads through accidents.
We commend the whistleblowers who provided these tip-offs and call for the proposed Whistleblowers Bill to expand reward to those who alert the nation to the existence of anything that could lead to loss of innocent lives and property and danger to the security of our people.
We are amazed that in spite of the many Federal agencies that populate our ports, contraband and substandard imported goods still find their ways into the system. It shows that people are not doing their jobs, perhaps due to pervasive corruption.
We call on the Federal Government to take drastic actions against negligence of duty by federal agencies charged with securing the nation against imported dangerous goods. The SON, the National Agency for Food and Drugs Administration and Control (NAFDAC), the Customs and other agencies require total rejig to wake them up to their duties of preventing the entry of toxic goods through the ports into the country.
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