Customs Charges Anti-Smuggling Squads to Ensure Total Blockage of Trapped Vehicles

Ndubuisi Francis in Abuja
The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hammed Ali (rtd), has charged the anti-smuggling squads to ensure total blockage to prevent desperate vehicle importers from smuggling in trapped vehicles from the land borders.

The NCS had on January 1, 2017 enforced a complete ban on the importation of vehicles through the land borders, a development which has reportedly resulted in tens of thousands of cars being trapped.

A statement issued by the NCS’ Acting Public Relations Officer, Jospeh Attah, said Ali had directed operatives of the Headquarters Compliance Team and Federal Operations Units to compliment the resident officers of land borders to effectively beef up security and enforce the federal government policy on non importation of vehicles through the land borders.

He stated that apart from being a statutory function of NCS to implement government fiscal policies, as Nigerians, the advantages and opportunities inherent in the policy is a motivation to ensure compliance.

“Regrettably, despite Nigeria’s bigger and more equipped port facilities, statistics has shown that more than 90 per cent of vehicles imported to neighbouring countries are normally on transit to Nigeria market.

“Though duty rates chargeable for motor vehicles at both land borders and seaports remain the same, importers of these vehicles exploit the informality of land border trade, since they are not usually manifested for Nigeria ports to either smuggle through the porous border or compromise some customs officers and that of other agencies to short change the nation,” the statement said.

The NCS Comptroller General charged the anti-smuggling squads to ensure total blockage such that no desperate vehicle importer is allowed to smuggle in any of the trapped vehicles.

The statement listed the merits of the policy, adding that channelisation of motor vehicles to seaports will enable suppression of smuggling as well as creating business and job opportunities with the eventual emergence of bonded car parks for vehicles around the country, among others.

The NCS noted that curiously, Nigerians were being told that over 10,000 vehicles are already trapped ten days into the enforcement of the policy when statistics shows that vehicles properly imported through the land borders from January 2014 to December 31, 2016 were only 209,691 with N38,551,569,751 paid as duty.
Smuggled vehicles seized within the same period, the NCS said, were 5,998 with a duty paid value of N10,271,734,415.36.