Shakirat Abdulmajeed
29 April 2004
Lagos — The Nigerian Customs Service, Lagos has impounded a United Arab Emirates (UAE) chartered cargo Boeing 767 own-ed by Omar Travels, at the Murtala Mohammed Airport, for carrying contraband goods running into several billions of naira.
The comptroller-general of customs, Mr Jacob Gyang Buba who disclosed this in Lagos yesterday said the aircraft was impounded for carrying goods such as textile materials, bags, shoes and artificial flowers, and showed the minister of state for finance, Mrs Nenadi Usman and the special adviser to the president on manufacturing, Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir, round the impounded aircraft, telling newsmen that the importers whose names were not revealed, gave a false declaration of the contents of the aircraft.
He said that the importer declared the goods inside the Boeing 767 with registration no 9G-NHA as containing personal effects and that the aircraft crew members were still undergoing interrogation on the seized goods. Warning smugglers of the dire consequences of importing contraband into the country, the custom comptroller-general said smugglers were capable of undermining the economic recovery of the federal government.
The customs boss also disclosed that the Murtala Mohammed Airport Lagos command of the customs generated more than N50 billion for the first quarter of the year 2004 out of N330 billion target set for the command, while Mrs Nenadi Usman described the smugglers' action as unpatriotic, and commended the customs services for nipping what she called an economic crime in the bud.
The pilot of the impounded aircraft, an expatriate who would not disclose his name except in the presence of his legal representatives told newsmen that he was flying into the country for the third time, and that he was not aware of the contents of the aircraft.
The pilot who was calm throughout the inspection simply said: "I am not in anyway scared of arrest, I am not the owner of the goods, and I wouldn't know the content of the aircraft."
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