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• Smugglers on rampage

 

Smugglers on rampage

• Customs officers strategise for Yuletide

By FIDELIS UGBOMEH

ATTACKS by dare-devil armed smugglers who again are on the prowl with sophisticated weapons challenging officials of Nigerian Customs Service and thereby frustrating the efforts of successive governments to prohibit the importation of some categories of goods and shore up local production, is source of major as the yuletide draws near.

National Daily gathered that the latest of such confrontation occurred on Thursday, when some miscreants in connivance with smugglers held hostage officers of the service who attempted to seize two trucks conveying prohibited goods at Seme near Badagry.

No casualties were recorded, thanks to the advice of the Customs Area Controller (CAC), Mallam Ali Wakili that officers should desist from a reprisal confrontation with hoodlums.

But to forestall more of such ugly incidents, the Service in consultation with the Oba Akran of Badagry, the Oba of Kwame and other royal fathers in the Badagry area, have slated an emergency town hall meeting for November 17, 2008.

The Baales, various community leaders, market men and women, okada riders, transport unions, agents, Customs brokers and members of the border communities among other issues, are expected to brain-storm at the meeting on ways of check-mating the smugglers, sources hinted the National Daily at the weekend.