Mr Joseph Attah, NCS Public Relations Officer, who stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Tuesday in Abuja, said this was in line with the Presidential directive on seized perishable items.

Attah said that the reinstatement of the ban on rice importation through the land borders few months after lifting it in 2016 was to stem the tide of rice smuggling.

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“I can assure you that our anti-smuggling strategy is yielding positive dividends in the last three months, we made a total seizure of 136,506 50kg bags of rice.

“The last one year, we made a seizure of 205,825 bags with a duty paid value of more than N1billion; that is just rice alone.

“To build another layer of policing, we have what we call the compliance team that in the last three months alone, made a total of 921 seizures with a DPV (that is Duty Paid Value) of more than N1 billion.

‘’Most of these seizures are rice and vehicles.

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The NCS spokesman said that customs in its relentless war against rice smugglers had record successes and paid great prices through the loss of its officers.

NAN recalls that the distribution of relief materials by the NCS to the IDPs across the country was in compliance with the presidential directive to distribute seized perishable items to IDPs in the Northeast. (NAN)