Border closure: Nigeria nabs 697 irregular migrants, seizes N7bn goods

The Federal Government of Nigeria has arrested 697 irregular migrants and seized goods worth N7.350 billion seven months into the ongoing partial border closure exercise.

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), in a statement on Tuesday by its Public Relations Officer, Deputy Comptroller Joseph Attah, said by 6th March 2020, it had arrested the 697 irregular migrants and recorded the N7.3bn seizures.

The goods include; 86,602 units of 50kg bags of foreign rice, 1,172 vehicles, 695 fertilizer bags, and 2,997 drums filled with petrol.

OThe others are; 16,771 empty petrol containers, 90 engine boats, 68 groundnut oil drums, 26 petrol tankers, 14,604 petrol kegs, 656 motorcycles, 15,089 petrol kegs, and vegetable oil.

Customs said the drill, codenamed ‘Exercise SWIFT Response’, is yielding positive results, saving Nigeria huge resources and enhancing national security.

“For instance, the importation of drugs and proliferation of small arms and light weapons, which usually fuel terrorism and other forms of criminality in the country, have been considerably curtailed,” it noted.

The Office of the National Security Adviser (ONSA), which is coordinating the exercise, has continued to record large numbers of seizures and arrests from the four sectors of the North-West, North-Central, South-West, and South-South geopolitical zones, it said.

However, Customs said Nigeria remained committed to ongoing diplomatic engagements to finding lasting solutions to the concerns that necessitated the partial border closure.

Apart from the ongoing Tripartite Technical Committee meetings comprising Nigeria, Benin and Niger Republic, Ministers in charge of ECOWAS Affairs and Trade of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Niger, Nigeria and Togo met on 15 February 2020 in Ouagadougou to assess the impact of the partial border closure.

It said, while government is fully committed to the recommendations of the respective committees, the coordinator of the drill insisted that; “the priority remains to keep our borders safe from any inimical activity that would compromise our national interests and by extension our national security.”