Customs acquires helicopters to fight smuggling

By IFEYINWA OBI

COMPTROLLER-general of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi, has said that two Bell Helicopters have been acquired by the service to boost its war against smugglers and cross borders crimes.
The helicopters, according to him, would be used to identify smugglers using unapproved routes and report same information to officers and men on ground to make them more lethal and deadly.

Abdullahi spoke amidst information that surveillance in the Calabar axis led to the arrest and seizure of two big boats loaded with contraband. The contraband according to informed sources included textiles, ladies shoes and bags which were being smuggled into the country by boat from Equatorial Guinea.
Meanwhile, the Nigeria Custom Services has intensified routine checks on railway stations in a bid to catch unscrupulous elements using the rail to transport contraband goods. The close monitoring of the rail stations became necessary as men of the service stumbled on a pack of contraband estimated at over a hundred million naira, snatched in seven coaches of a train whose destination was Enugu.

When contacted, the Customs service image maker, Wale Adeniyi confined the stories, noting: “We are expanding the scale of our operations; records have shown that smugglers activities usually increase towards December as smugglers prepare for the Christmas seasonal sales. So, the officers and men of the Nigerian Custom Services are also making a corresponding preparation to make seasonal hauls as Christmas draws near. Very soon, our air wing will commence surveillance patrols of our border areas, to complement the ground patrols and that is why the Comptroller Gen has acquired two new Bell Helicopters for this purpose, with capacity to locate and intercept smugglers.”