Things are looking up at the Niger/Kogi Command with the establishment of a brand new Customs Processing Centre (CPC) by Compt Abubakar Mohammed Adamu- led management.
The Command which was almost inactive in terms of seizure profile has just been reactivated with the record of seizures on daily basis.
In the first two weeks of the coming of the CPC, no less than N76 million has been generated by the Command while 36 dainty luxury cars have been intercepted by the anti-smuggling Officers spread across major routes that have not yet been taken over by insurgents.
Adamu disclosed that the seizures made also include some large volumes of foreign rice which importation through land borders has been prohibited. The vehicles intercepted include the ones that correct duties were not collected on them, as well as the ones outrightly smuggled into the country without duty payment, which the smugglers claimed to be accidented vehicles.
The Command’s warehouse is being filled with such seizures in the last 3 months of his of his leadership. The Customs boss stated that the Comptroller General, Col Hameed Ibrahim Ali (Rtd) has given the Command adequate logistics that can enable it achieve maximum feats in it’s operational mandates, noting that his men would work assiduously to sustain the tempo of its work profile.
He pointed out that as an Anti-smuggling officer, he would ensure that all the nooks and crannies harbouring smugglers are combed to flush them out of his area of jurisdiction while seizing all uncustomed goods with them.
Not withstanding the Command’s efforts at curtailing smuggling in the area, investigations revealed that the menace of Banditry as well as Boko Haram is posing serious threats to the operations of the Customs Service in the zone as most of the vast areas are taken over by the Insurgents, making it almost impossible to police the large stretch of land mass in Niger State.
Security agencies in Niger state seem to be overwhelmed with Boko Haram incursions on daily basis. For the Customs, it does not look deterred to wage the anti-smuggling war which it is mostly doing through intelligence gathering.
Adamu who currently goes on periodic patrol spoke of the connivance of some security agencies in the smuggling of vehicles, noting that he and his men have always over-powered them to retrieve such seizures.
Comptroller Abubakar Mohammed Adamu has had his name associated with the anti-smuggling war of the Customs Service for more than two decades with mouth-watering seizures to his credit.
His stewardship cuts across several formations of the Service- with major imprint at the Federal Operations Unit zone ‘A’ for so many years; He was also at the Tincan Island Command where he recovered several millions of naira through the raising of Demand Notices (DN).
As Co-ordinator of the Comptroller General’s Strike force in the East, with headquarters in Port Harcourt, Compt Adamu raised the bar, recording one of the largest seizures in the life of the CG Strike force.
It is no surprise that soon after his promotion as a Comptroller, he was immediately redeployed to Minna/Kogi Command.
Source: Thispage Media