The operatives of the Federal Operations Unit, Zone B of the Nigeria Customs Service in Kaduna, impounded 61 smuggled sports utility vehicles, textile products and drugs with a total duty paid value of N2.8 billion.
Controller of the Customs anti-smuggling unit, Dalha Wada Chedi, during a press briefing on Tuesday, said the smuggled vehicles were impounded from smugglers at different locations in the North-Central and North-West zones following an intelligence report and improved strategies to raise the service’s operational performances.
Chedi also raised the alarm that smugglers had perfected new methods to evade arrest by hiring bandits in the northern region to smuggle contraband products into the country through additional illegal routes.
He noted that within a period of three months, the unit had made a total of 242 seizures of 21 different items.
Among the seized items were 61 SUVs with fake government plate numbers used by the smugglers to beat border officials.
Other items impounded by the unit included over 2,000 bags of parboiled rice, cartons of vegetable oil, bales of foreign second-hand clothes and shoes as well as drugs, which the comptroller handed over to the representative of the National Agency for Food and Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) for further prosecution.