The Nigeria Customs Service, Operation Whirlwind Taskforce Team, has blamed the foreign exchange for the rising rate of fuel smuggling in the country.
The Coordinator of the team, Husseini Ejibunnu, disclosed this on Tuesday in Lagos while displaying some seized premium motor spirit to journalists.
He explained that there were so many smugglers out there looking for dollars to smuggle fuel.
“It causes economic and security challenges. Economic in the essence that when you have an excess of this outside, it tells on our exchange rate. Because right now, there are so many smugglers out there looking for dollars to go out there, which will affect our naira,” Ejibunnu said.
He added that smuggling of the product had made fuel unavailable to Nigerians.
“Another economic disadvantage is that we in the country won’t see the product to use.
“The security implications are grievous, in the sense that when these products fall into the hands of non-state actors, terrorists, and kidnappers, they would use these things to oil their machines to come in and attack us,” he stated.
He urged Nigerians and the general public to provide the service with information on smugglers.
“Now it behoves all of us to come up with credible information as to those that are supplying these products to non-state actors to come and attack us.
“The irony of things is that why do we want to oil the machine of our attackers? We are giving them power, we gave them the energy to come in by giving them these products. “If we are able to cut the supply chain of this, it would have reduced their activities by 50 per cent because when they don’t see fuel to use, they won’t be able to come in,” Ejibunnu said.
He added that Operation Whirlwind was supposed to be for three months, but the tenure had been extended to an additional four months.
SOURCE: Opera