From Matthew Aramunde
Lagos
Consequent upon the near
break down of law and order at Sango area of Ogun state, south-west Nigeria
by hoodlum and miscreants who took advantage of the supposedly breaking open of
ware house in Sango market by men of the Federal Operations Unit Ikeja of
Customs of Nigeria ,the Public Relations officer of the unit, Mr. Jerry Attah
has said there are no iota of truth in the story that is making the rounds.
In an exclusive interview
with our correspondent at his Ikeja office, Attah stated that what actually
transpired was that based on intelligence report by the intelligence unit of
the Nigeria Customs, it was discovered that smugglers in their bid to beat the
water tight security measures, have now adopted new measure to halt their
nefarious activities by the Custom service and have resorted to the
use of motorcycle popularly called Okada to ferry across through illegal
routes banned items.
He further stated that
however the cutting edge technology employed by the intelligence unit, led
them to a certain ware house in the Sango area of Ogun State where these
motorcyclist eventually dumps their their illegally imported goods and that
prompted by their effrontery, the men of FOU swarmed on the said ware
house and was able to cart away seven trucks load of bags of different
varieties of parboiled rice and sizeable numbers of containers of ground nut
oil.
He expressed shock at
the report that the men of the unit broke into lock ups shop to retrieve the
said imported banned goods stressing that though the Customs is legally bound
to intercepts any goods that falls under the category of banned or restricted
goods but that the items retrieved by his men were those that were neatly
arranged outside the said ware house.
He gave the import duty
that should have been paid on the said items that includes 1,870 bags of
parboiled rice and 45 kegs of vegetable oil that his men were able to retrieve
as twelve million ,forty-five thousand and fifty hundred Naira even as he said
that there were other items that couldn't be recovered as the day broke
on.
'You must agree with me
that if the operation had been carried on in the day time, it would have led to
numerous causality and to prevent this, our men did not go back to the said
ware house to retrieve other offensives the seven truck couldn't cart away at a
go,so the story that that there was a clash with our men did not hold facts as
the operation was carried between 3am -4 am when these smugglers and their
allies were dead asleep. Attah intoned
He therefore called on
those who brought in the goods to come up with relevant documents to verify
that they never breach the laws on the importation of foreign goods rather than
go to curry sentiments by causing upheavals via miscreants and hoodlums to
cause mayhem and arson
It will be recalled
that in the early hours of Wednesday morning, most resident of Sango and its
environs woke up to behold wild protest by street urchins and hoodlums in their
hundreds who are alleged to sympathetic to the rice smugglers took over major
streets vandalizing shops and damaging wind shield of motorists, while
commuters took to their heels as others scampered for safety
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