The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Seme Border Command, has intercepted 2,200 jerry cans of smuggled of petrol with a Duty Paid Value worth over N10 million between Dec. 1, 2017 and January 2018.
The Command’s Chief Public Relations Officer, Taupyen Selchang made this known in a statement on Monday.
The statement quoted the Area Controller of the Command, Mohammed Aliyu, as saying that most of the seizures were made at Pashi-Yekeme Community in Owode and the creeks.
Aliyu said that the Command was determined to combat the smuggling of petroleum products usually done by the smugglers using jerry cans and passing through the creeks and illegal routes.
He said that they were not banning the use of trucks to transport the products to the communities along the border where they were legitimately meant to serve as was being wrongly and widely speculated by some people.
The Controller explained that smuggling of petrol in jerry cans had been a recurring decimal which operatives of the NCS had always tried to suppress.
“This has been our modest contribution toward ameliorating the sufferings of Nigerians caused by the current shortage of the product,’’ he said.
The Customs boss said that the Command had always and would continue to enforce her statutory mandate of revenue generation, suppression of smuggling and facilitation of legitimate trade.