The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has placed all sea ports, land borders and airports in the country on red alert as another round of 470 pump action rifles was intercepted at the Tin Can Island Command of the Service in Lagos, on Wednesday.
This latest seizure takes the number of arms seizures at the command in the command to four in the last eight months amounting to 2, 671 pump action rifles within the period.
The Controller General of Customls (CGC), Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) who spoke with journalists while parading the rifles said that like previous seizures, the 40 feet container was imported from Turkey.
According to him, the profile of containers from Turkey was eventually narrowed down to one 20 feet container with number: CMAU189817/8 where the terminal operator was consequently directed to quarantine the flagged container for stricter analysis.
He added that the container was later transferred to enforcement unit where 100℅ examination revealed 470 pump action rifles as against elbow plumbing plastics on the bill of lading.
He said, “As our seaports become increasingly impenetrable, we suspect they may want to try other entry points.
“Let me assure Nigerians that the Service is presently at critical alert following my directive to all Customs Area Controllers yesterday. We will do all in our powers to further secure this country,” he maintained.
He further stated that all goods, containers coming into the country would henceforth be subjected to profiling before they will be allowed to come into the country.
He however assured that since the new container belongs to the same importer as the container of 1,100 pump action rifles, investigations would be reinvigorated to fish out all those directly or remotely connected with the importation.
The CGC also stated that investigations have revealed that the arms are being imported from Turkey, the Service would have a diplomatic meeting with the ambassador of Turkey to Nigeria even as he said that there was a reliable intelligence that there were Nigerian syndicates in Turkey behind the importation.
He regretted that the new model might impiglnge on the federal government’s policy on ‘Ease of doing business in the port as it has become necessary to carry out 100% examination on all containers in the port.
