The Nigeria Customs Service Board has applied to the Federal High Court in Lagos, seeking a forfeiture order on various illegally imported goods valued at N50,151,606.
The goods said to have been intercepted between April and June 2017, include loads of fairly used clothes, shoes, bags, bed sheets, breakable plates; 7,163 bags of foreign parboiled rice, and 147 jerry cans of vegetable oil.
Apart from these, the customs service also seeks a forfeiture order on seven vehicles, also intercepted between April and June, which values were, however, not stated.
The Assistant Legal Adviser of the Nigeria Customs Service Board, Federal Operations Unit, Zone A, Ikeja, Shehu Bodinga, appeared before Justice Abdulaziz Anka on Monday with an ex parte application seeking a forfeiture order on the goods and the vehicles.
Bodinga told the judge that since the goods were intercepted and seized, their owners had absconded and refused to show up to claim them, having realised the severity of the punishment for their offence.
He said the Customs had received a directive from the presidency that part of the seized items should be distributed to victims of Boko Haram insurgency living in the Internally Displaced Persons camp in the North-East.