The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has said that it is still investigating the importation of 661 rifles imported into the country from China in January.
The cache of arms, which came into the country through the Apapa port, was intercepted along Mile 2 area of Lagos State road by operatives of the Federal Operations Unit, Zone A.
Controller, Apapa Command, Comptroller Musa Jibril, who disclosed this in a chat with SHIPS & PORTS DAILY in his office, said all officers involved in the release of the consignment including the importer and his agent are still being detained.
“We have submitted our two interim reports and the third one is in the offing. All the officers that are directly involved have been detained and useful information collected from them.
“We did not stop at that; we also had the importer, his agent and some of the agents who also work with the agency that cleared the consignment and who in the course of examination we discovered also have something to do with the declaration,” Jibril said.
When asked how long it will take to conclude the investigation, the Customs boss said, “We are almost done because we want to make it holistic this time around. We are not thinking of narrowing this investigation to Customs officers alone,” he said.
Jubril said the command would continue to maintain high level of physical examination at the port.
“We don’t expect to slow down on that because the incident of the 661 riffles is something that we don’t want to have a repeat of and beside 100 percent physical examination will not be difficult if everybody do what they are supposed to do,” he said.
SHIPS & PORTS DAILY however gathered that some officers including the command’s Asycuda Project Manager (APM), M.Y Gaya, who was earlier invited for investigation at the Customs headquarters in Abuja, have been cleared to return to their duty post.
Copyright 2016 Ships & Ports Ltd. Permission to use quotations from this article is granted subject to appropriate credit given to www.shipsandports.com.ng as the source.