The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) says it has distributed 136,476 bags of rice to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) camps across the country in the last one year.
NCS Public Relations Officer, Joseph Attah, who stated this in an interview on Tuesday in Abuja, said this was in line with the Presidential directive on seized perishable items.
Attah said the reinstatement of the ban on rice importation through the land borders few months after lifting it in 2016 was to stem the tide of rice smuggling.
”I can assure you that our anti-smuggling strategy is yielding positive dividends. In the last three months, we made a total seizure of 136,506 50kg bags of rice,” he said.
Attah said the agency has made a seizure of 205,825 bags of rice with a duty paid value of more than N1bn in 2016 alone.
”To build another layer of policing, we have what we call the compliance team that in the last three months alone, made a total of 921 seizures of rice and vehicles with a DPV (that is Duty Paid Value) of more than N1 billion,” he added.
The NCS spokesperson said customs in its war against rice smugglers had recorded successes and paid great prices through the loss of its officers.
