The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) said at the weekend that it has intercepted 35,194 bags of smuggled rice in the last two months with Duty Paid Value of N213 million.

Spokesman of the service; Mr Wale Adeniyi, told reporters in Abuja that customs officers in different area commands across the country intercepted the contraband goods between March and April.

He said the highest seizure of 8000 bags of rice was recorded by the Federal Operations Unit Zone ‘A’, Lagos State, followed by another, involving 7,269 bags of rice, in the same zone.

Explaining further, he disclosed that: ‘The first two seizures were made by a patrol team of Federal Operations Unit and these were operations that were conducted using intelligence cultivated by our officers and it is an operation that lasted for three weeks.

According to him, “officers had to stay in a particular village monitoring movement on the creeks and monitoring movement of the smugglers before the seizure was made.“The first one was about 7,000 bags of rice . second one was about 8,000 bags of rice.`