By Godfrey Bivbere

LAGOS – Apapa Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, has impounded five containers with Duty Paid Value, DPV of N101,151,447 million for false declaration.

The seizure is a fall-out of the suspension of the benchmark policy of the Service which led to the enforcement of sections 46 and 47 of the Customs and Excise Management Act, CEMA, which empowers the Service to seize goods whose owners doctored documents with the intention of short-paying the accruable duty.

The containers, which include two 20-footers and three 40-footers, are at the APM terminal, Apapa.

Customs Area Controller, CAC, of the Command, Garko Yusuf, explained that the confiscated items included one 20-footer container of batteries, marked MRKU819734822G1, whose importer declared as containing 1,700 dozens of cartons but was found to contain 173,000 dozens of cartons of the products.

Others were a 20-footer container of used engine, one 40-footer container of used Hiace bus concealed with 75 cartons of deodorant spray and various auto parts and two 40-footer containers of new electronics such as LED TV sets, Hi-FI sound systems, blue ray players, which were curiously declared as auto spare parts.