By Stephen Ubanna
For much of last week and Tuesday, June 18, 2019, Adahunse Rashid, and
The Value News walked into Adahnse, the Seme
Given the importance attached to the operation to dispossess the smugglers of the smuggled textile materials which was imported from the Asian country of China , through Cotonou seaport, Republic of Benin, Adahunse and his next in Command in the Enforcement Unit ,were said to have occupied themselves watching the CCTV, to effectively monitor the movement of the smugglers with their cargo in the Creek. Muhammed, the Command Area C
The Seme Customs Comptroller may have taken advantage of the recent official t visit of the Customs Comptroller General to the Command to make bold Statement the anti-smuggling in fire in him has not not burnt out but have been intensified that smugglers operating with the Seme and Owode out station cold no longer bear as many of them have been forced to go underground, particular the vehicle and foreign parboiled rice smugglers. It was gathered that when the textile materials smugglers found out that the game was up, they made several attempts to return to their base at Republic of Benin but it was too late.
The difficulty in returning to their base at Republic of Benin may have forced them to change tactics to beat Seme Customs personnel to it. They got it wrong as Adahunse, the Seme Command , Deputy Deputy Comptroller, who has been on the matter, was busy monitoring them through the CCTV. Convinced that they have been boxed to a corner and there is no escape route for them, he has positioned his men at all strategic locations along the along the Owode-Seme route in readiness to strike.
When the coast became clear, the Customs Deputy Comptroller who was in touch with the patrol team leader was said to have given them the nod to move into the Creeks and do the needful by the dispossessing the smugglers of the smuggled textile materials without a loss of life.
Aware of the implication of not intercepting the items from the smugglers, the team members who were watched closely monitored by Adahunse, through the CCTV, during the operation, in a commandoes- style had swooped on the smugglers who quickly abandoned the items and took to their heels.
The fallout was that that the team that went for the operation dispossessed the smugglers of 175 pieces of textile materials , which the Valuation Authority put at about N2.2 million.
The seizure may have won emboldened the Seme Customs Comptroller to stand before Ali ,the Comptroller General to welcome him to the Command on Wednesday, June 19, 2019, as he has spectacular seizures to show to him and also give him an insight about the revenue profile of the Command between March -June 19, 2019.
Eye witness account said the Customs Comptroller General listened with rapt attention as Muhammed, the Seme Customs Comptroller reeled out the figures which may have convinced him that the anti-smuggling operations have taken a new dimension going by the seizures that had had been made in a week. An elated Customs Boss was said to have urged Muhammed and his officers to sustain the tempo of the anti-smuggling operations to enhance trade facilitation.
Many believe that the Seme Customs Comptroller may have won himself back to heart of the Comptroller going by what he saw on ground at Seme. While the Command has intensified the anti-smuggling war in its area of Jurisdiction, importers with their agents are no longer finding it with funny with the planned introduction of the European Union installed fixed scanners at the joint Border post for scanner of trucks ladden cargoes. Reliable sources informed The Value News that officers that would manner the scanners in reading the images had been trained for it. This would save the Command from the troubles of physical examinations of cargoes which agents claimed are time wasting.
In a related development , Abdullahi Musa, Comptroller, Seme Tin-can Island Command , described as a workaholic in Customs Circles, and his officers have refused to be blackmailed by agents who were said to had lodged Complaints of multiple alerts , in the Command to KC.Ekekezie as they insist that the right thing must be done.
Those
.