The Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, has said that it is wrong for customs officers to raid markets in search of smuggled goods.
Under the previous management of the Nigeria Customs Service, market and car mart raids were carried out regularly.
In December 2023, the Federal High Court in Lagos ordered the Nigeria Customs Service to pay the sum of N500 million to the Registered Trustees of Auto Dealers for unlawful invasion and sealing of their car marts since September 30, 2019. The auto dealers, through their lawyer, Ubani & Co, had sued the Nigerian Customs Service Board, the Chairman, Nigerian Customs Service Board, and the Comptroller General of Customs.
In their suit marked FHC/L/CS/665/2021, the plaintiffs asked the court to determine whether the defendants had any power, authority, or justification to invade and seal their members’ business premises, on the grounds that vehicles in their shows were smuggled.
The court, in a judgement delivered on December 27, 2023 by Justice Abimbola Awogboro, ordered the Customs to immediately unseal the plaintiffs’ business premises and pay them N500 million in damages.
The judge said Customs had no justification to continue invading and sealing the car dealer premises on the grounds that the vehicles in their car shops had earlier been inspected, assessed, and cleared at the port by officers of the Customs.
However, in what appears to be an agreement with the ruling of the court, Adeniyi, while briefing the House of Representatives Committee on Customs and Excise during an oversight visit to the Customs headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday, said he has not authorised Customs officers to raid any market.
“Let me issue a disclaimer. I did not authorise any Customs officer to go to any market. We are not supposed to go to any market or operate in the market. But the market is not supposed to provide a sanctuary for smuggled goods.
“If we have information that there are smuggled goods in an area, the law allows us to go there. We want to keep the peace, that is why we don’t raid markets, but we also want market people to display some level of responsibility,” Adeniyi said.
Also speaking, Deputy Comptroller General of Customs in charge of trade and tariffs, C.K. Niagwan, said the service collected the sum of N2.7 trillion as revenue in the first half of the year. She said the amount is N200 billion higher than N2.5 billion revenue projected for the period.
Niagwan attributed the increased revenue generation to “blockage of leakages”.
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