THE AMPHIBIANS MAKE RECORD SEIZURES.
The Western Marine Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, an amphibious unit of the Service has recorded an unprecedented amount of confiscated items in the period of January to December, 2020.
The information at our disposal indicates that the command made huge seizures with a total Duty Paid Value (DPV) of One Billion, One Hundred and Four Million, Six Hundred and Forty Seven Thousand, Three Hundred and Seventy Naira (#1,104,647,370.00) only as against the Total DPV of One Hundred and Twenty Nine Million, Five Hundred and Fifty Nine Thousand, Six Hundred and Fifty Six Naira, Forty Six Kobo (#129, 559,656.46) only in the Year 2019.
The Customs Area Controller (CAC) of the Command, Comptroller Olugboyega Peters PSC+ Dss made this known. CAC Peters indicated that “these unprecedented seizures were made as a result of the strategies put in place in terms of 24hour patrol, capacity building, surveillance, intelligence gathering, doggedness and determination of our operatives in making the Zone
unbearable for smugglers”. He declared further that ” I want to use this medium to appreciate the efforts of other sister agencies for their contributions in providing relevant information in
making some of these seizures”.
The CAC also added, saying “You may recall that the operatives of the Command had on the 24th April 2020 made a unique seizure of over 10tonnes of Cannabis Sativa (Marijuana) valued at One Billion, Two Million, Fifty Thousand Naira
(#1, 002,050,000.00) only which happened to be the biggest single item catch of Marijuana ever seized in the history of Nigeria Customs Service”
The seizure of this large amount of Marijuana has received wide commendations especially from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crimes who are willing to help install a Video Tele-Conferencing (VTC) Cisco WebEx Equipment that will aid the Command’s operations.
The CAC warned smugglers thus “those unscrupulous elements; we want them to know that there is no hiding place for them and whatever their strategy, we will always be ahead of them.
