MAN SMUGGLING BAGS OF RICE AS DEAD BODY

The dwindling economic conditions are forcing petty smugglers to transport bags of rice as coffins carried in ambulances.

This unprecedented action of smuggling rice in an ambulance under the guise of corpses into Nigeria from Benin Republic was unveiled yesterday at the Seme Border by the operatives of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) who promptly arrested the vendor.

According to Customs officials at Seme Border, the suspected smuggler, Moses Degbogbahun, arranged 11  50kg bags of rice in place of a corpse in his Volvo ambulance with Lagos registration number DV 74EKY.

However, luck ran out on him yesterday when he was subjected to a rigorous search by custom officer who had observed him move “corpses” across the border regularly without being searched.

His frequent movement across the border made the officers at Aradagun area of Badagry to suspect foul play prompting them to insist on seeing the “corpse”. But they were, however, amazed to see that they had allowed so many “corpses” across the border without knowing the identities of the dead (rice).

The leader of Customs mobile patrol team stated that the frequency of the said ambulance patronising the international route with the  “dead bodies”  had become alarming making it necessary to ascertain the identity of the dead.

Rice smuggling across Seme Border became a lucrative trade to warrant such antic when the Federal Government banned rice importation into the country in its attempt to boost local capacity.
Meanwhile, over 50 million bags of imported rice, worth over N1 billion, are currently trapped in various warehouses in Cotonou, Benin Republic, following the ban on foreign rice import into Nigeria.

Many importers who violated the import restrictions by government are now regretting because they can no longer push the imported commodities into Nigerian markets.
One of the importers told Daily Sun that many of them have lost their collateral to banks because they cannot  service their loans.
“We have lost a lot. The banks are not giving us breathing space. They have confiscated all our  belongings,” he said.

This tough stance by the Nigerian government had pitted the importers against their bankers because most of them borrowed  to import the goods. They had targeted the ‘ember’ months – the Eid-del Kabir and Christmas festivities – to flood Nigerian  markets with imported rice.

Culled from Daily sun news