The Coordinator, Joint Border Patrol, Zone 3 of Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Muhammed Garba, has said smugglers have devised new ways of smuggling banned items into the country.
According to Garba, smugglers now conceal rice and other contraband in bags containing yam flour or gas cylinders.
The NCS chief said they had earlier impounded 20 bags of yam flour, with foreign rice hidden in some of them at the border route in Kwara State.
Addressing a press conference in Ilorin on February 26, the coordinator revealed that over 1, 346 bags of foreign rice loaded in three vehicles had been impounded in a joint border operation.
He stated that other items seized included used clothes, 57 units of vehicles, petroleum products, 16 motorcycles used for smuggling rice.
The coordinator added that guns, 85 cartridges as well as 325 cartons of banned cosmetics were recovered in border towns in Kwara and in Lokoja, Kogi State.
According to him, the command had been sensitizing commercial drivers on the need to obey the new rules on border closure.
He said;
Border closure has increased revenue generation by the Federal Government by blocking all illegal routes used for smuggling. Used clothes are dangerous for people.
Garba advised the public to follow the right channel when buying their goods, saying smuggling was a crime attracting five years in prison.
