Nahimat Adekoga
The House of Representatives has mandated its Committee on Customs and Excise to investigate failure of Nigerian Custom Services to auction confiscated goods.
The House said on Thursday following the adoption of a motion on the need to Investigate the failure of the Nigerian Customs Service to Auction Confiscated Goods.
The sponsor of the motion, Prestige Ossy, representing Abia on the platform of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), said that ban on the auction of goods seized by the NCS had resulted to the forfeiture of such goods to the Federal Government.
Ossy explained that since the ban took effect in 2015, it had resulted to the proliferation of seized goods at various formations of the NCS across the country.
He said the goods seized in large numbers from different parts of the country included vehicles, consumables, clothing materials and containers of assorted household goods.
The lawmaker said instead of auctioning the seized items worth billions of Naira, the service left them to degrade.
“Most of these goods, especially the vehicles with Duty Paid Value (DPV) worth over N6 billion, are rapidly depreciating.The Customs service will eventually spend huge amount of money in disposing them when it ought to have generated huge revenue for the government by auctioning them before they wither away,” the lawmaker said
Ossy explained that the service had announced the establishment of an auction sale website in 2015, but regrettably two years on, it has has not materialised.
“The failure to auction goods in its custody had denied the Federal Government over N1 trillion which ought to accrue to it from the auctioning of those goods,” he said.
After the adoption of the motion, the house passed it to the Committee on Customs and Excise to investigate and report back in eight weeks.
