The Nigeria Customs Service Board has approached a Federal High Court sitting in Lagos, seeking an order for the forfeiture of various illegally imported goods valued at N50,151,606. The goods said to have been intercepted between April and June 2017. They include loads of fairly used clothes, shoes, bags, bed sheets, breakable plates; 7,163 bags of foreign parboiled rice, and 147 jerry cans of vegetable oil.
Seven vehicles also intercepted by the Service were added to the order but their value was not stated.
According to the Assistant Legal Adviser of the Nigeria Customs Service Board, Federal Operations Unit, Zone A, Ikeja, Shehu Bodinga, who appeared before Justice Abdulaziz Anka on Monday with an ex parte application to seek a forfeiture order on the goods and the vehicles.
Bodinga told the judge that since the goods were intercepted and seized, their owners had absconded and refused to show up to claim them, having realised the severity of the punishment for their offence.
He said the Customs had received a directive from the presidency that part of the seized items should be distributed to victims of Boko Haram insurgency living in the Internally Displaced Persons camp in the North-East.
