The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has distributed 136,476 bags of rice to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps across the country in the last one year.
Customs Public Relations Officer, Joseph Attah, who stated this on Tuesday in Abuja, said this was in line with the Presidential directive on seized perishable items.
Attah said that the reinstatement of the ban on rice importation through the land borders few months after lifting it in 2016 was to stem the tide of rice smuggling.
He said, “I can assure you that our anti-smuggling strategy is yielding positive dividends in the last three months, we made a total seizure of 136,506 50kg bags of rice.
“The last one year, we made a seizure of 205,825 bags with a duty paid value of more than N1billion; that is just rice alone.
“To build another layer of policing, we have what we call the compliance team that in the last three months alone, made a total of 921 seizures with a DPV (that is Duty Paid Value) of more than N1 billion.
‘’Most of these seizures are rice and vehicles.”
Attah said Customs in its relentless war against rice smugglers had record successes and paid great prices through the loss of its officers.
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