Arms importation: Customs DG meets Turkish envoy today

The Nigeria Customs Service on Thursday announced that the service would be having a diplomatic meeting with the Ambassador of Turkey on Friday (today) to address the spate of illegal importation of weapons into the country.

The Comptroller General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali, (retd.), stated this in Lagos on Thursday where he confirmed the seizure of 470 pump action rifles in Tin Can Island Port.

It was reported on Wednesday that the Tin Can Island command of the service on Tuesday uncovered another container suspected to contain yet another cache of arms imported from Turkey.

According to Ali, the importer had falsely declared the recent consignment as elbow plumbing plastics.

He explained that this illicit trade had been ongoing for the past seven months, maintaining that this seizure brought to a total of 2,671 rifles seized within the last eight months.

The interception of the 470 rifles came barely one week after the command intercepted a 20-foot container load of 1,100 pump-action rifles.

The seizure is the third in the series of container loads of arms seizure at Tin Can Port alone and fourth in the country within eight months.

He stressed that Nigeria could not afford to allow dangerous weapons into the country especially at a time when it was faced with different security threats.

He said, “Tomorrow, we will be having a diplomatic meeting with the Ambassador of Turkey specifically on this issue, this is one of the steps being taken outside the shores of the country to address this illicit trade.

“We have found out that the people bringing in these weapons are Nigerians. There are syndicates in Turkey who are manifesting these weapons. We are yet to get to the bottom of the whole issue. We will investigate to know if these weapons are meant for commercial purposes or group of insurgents or agitators.”

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