The Nigeria Customs leadership at the Murtala Muhammed Airport Command, Ikeja Lagos has revealed how the officers and men of the formation busted a syndicate of tramadol traffickers, and in the process intercepted pharmaceutical products suspected to be tramadol tablets.
According to the Command, the alleged the illicit tramadol tablets exceeded the normal milligrams approved by the Federal Government. Speaking on the Command’s performance through January to October 2023 in his office at Ikeja, Lagos on Wednesday, November 13, 2023, the Customs Area Controller(CAC) in charge of the Command, Comptroller Mohammed Sani Yusuf, said the arrested tramadol was found to contain about 225mg which made it exceed the approved 100mg and 50mg respectively. He said the importation of tramadol is not outrightly banned by the Federal Government if the importer complied with the approved milligrams, hence the arrest and seizure of the tablets which he said would be handed over to the appropriate agency.
Comptroller Yusuf put the Duty Paid Value (DPV) of the seized tramadol at N3.5 billion. He disclosed that the drug was imported from China and India, and further hinted that one suspect was arrested in the process. Comptroller Yusuf assured that with the measures the Command had adopted to tackle indiscriminate smuggling in hard drugs via the areas under its purview, “Incidents of tramadol smuggling will be on the decrease”.
The Command’s CAC used the forum to reveal the performance of the Area Command in revenue generation. He said from January to October 2023 the Command was able to generate a total of N74.2 billion as customs duties and other charges , stressing that the amount generated showed a difference of N14.2 billion, a 23 percent increase from the N60 billion the Command generated in the same period of 2022.
The CAC praised the resilience of the officers and men of the Command in ensuring that proper declarations were duly enforced which he said was responsible for the huge difference in revenue collection. He also enthused that the Command has exceeded over 70 percent of its revenue target for the year 2023.
