New dawn had exclusively reported the plan championed by marketers who hitherto benefited from multi-billion dollars fuel subsidy scam to cause the fuel scarcity few months before general elections in a bid to discredit the government.
The plan hatched by the politicians in opposition party is to hike surge of fuel smuggling out of the country to cause imbalance in demand and supply of the product.
Confirming the story, the government, which read the riot act to fuel smugglers, noted that the Nigeria’s Customs Services (NCS) now has the push to ensure that Nigeria’s boarders are made impassable for smugglers.
Assistant Comptroller General of Customs, Zone A, Aminu Dahiru, confirmed that Operatives of the Nigerian Customs Service, attached to the Federal Operations Unit, (FOU), Zone A Ikeja, had already intercepted N1.5billion worth of petroleum products allegedly being smuggle to Benin Republic.
The petroleum products which were contained in over 50,000 plastic jerry cans were carefully concealed in about 12 wooden speed boats.
The products were being carried through Ijofin creek under Ipokia Local government of Ogun State.
Assistant Comptroller General of Customs, Zone A, Aminu Dahiru who was accompanied by the Customs Area Controller of FOU Zone A, Compt. Mohammed Aliyu and controller of Ogun Command, Michael Agbara said the products were intercepted after days of intelligence gathering by officers of the unit.
According to him, exportation of petroleum products through the creeks is an illegal trade and the service will continue to deal with it.
He said: “This is a big seizure and it needed to be showcased because of the seize, the volume involved. The 11,000 Jerry cans that were evacuated worth and in addition there is more than triple of it in the creeks about to be smuggled out of the country so we thought it’s time to show Nigerians on activities of economic saboteurs and how we are dealing ruthlessly with them.
“This is an unimaginable seizures made by officers. since it is a petroleum products we do not expect it to be smuggled into Nigeria so naturally it is going out also part of what you saw in the morning at the FOU, Zone A, Ikeja came from this point. This can confirm what i say that what we have in the water triple, what we have at FOU.
“We are sure of what we have at FOU because that gave us exactly 11,000 jerrycan of petroleum products and what we have here is more than what we have their what have been evacuated is just a pinch but, the value can only be determined if we know the quantity but the other one at the FOU, we are able to arrive at N40m because we multiply numbers of kegs to numbers of litres to arrive at that.”
