In February 17th, 2019, Nigerians were outraged by the footage of a video that went viral in which the operatives of the FOU  killed an innocent Nigerian under the guise of carrying out their duties.

The incident, which happened at the Sagamu interchange along Ibadan-Lagos expressway, led to the curious shooting of one Godwin Agada, who was ironically working with the patrol team as a ‘water-fetcher’.

On January 21st, 2019, five innocent Nigerians among who was one Jamiu Bello, a fresh graduate of Tai Solarin University of Education, were felled at Yewa Community at Owode-Yewa in Yewa South LGA of Ogun State when they raided a house suspected to be harbouring contraband goods.

On November 2018, the Nigeria Police arrested seven Customs officers for shooting indiscriminately and killing one Mrs Patience Oni near Badagry roundabout.

On March 2017, one Taofiq, a cab driver, was killed at Kobape town, Abeokuta Ogun State for allegedly carrying three bags of rice suspected to have been smuggled.

On January 2017, one Bukola Olugunna, a pregnant woman , was shot and fatally wounded by Customs operatives on the trails of suspected smugglers at Iyana-Iyesi in Ado-Odo/Ota LGA in Ogun state.

In 2013, an FOU officer allegedly shot and killed one Chief  Anayo Chinedu, the Vice-chairman of Idiroko border chapter of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) under a curious circumstance.

The Federal Operations Unit of the Nigeria Customs is the anti-Smuggling arm of the service created to carry out one of the statutory duties of the Customs, which is to suppress smuggling.There are four such units headquartered in the four Zonal structures of the Customs.

They are FOU Zone A, Lagos for the South-West, FOU Zone B at Kaduna, FOU Zone C at Owerri and FOU Zone D at Bauchi.

The most actively notorious and deadly among them is the FOU Zone A Lagos.

So their creation and duties are statutory and legal.

However, the officers of these special units have killed and maimed many innocent Nigerians in the course of stalking and tracking smugglers and their contraband goods.

This platform is worried that the special unit of the Customs created for a noble and worthy cause is gradually turning into a notorious gang.

The anti-smuggling officers, who are supposed to be heroes for their daring and heroic efforts to combat the scorching menace of smuggling, are sadly turning into villains due to the over-zealousness and needless killings of innocent Nigerians.

Rather than gain the sympathy and support of people for these officers in their dangerous task of confronting the dare-devil smugglers who sometimes kill and maim them, the senseless killings and maiming by some of the operatives have now attracted public anger and opprobrium to the efforts of the units.

We sympathise with the Customs for being caught between carrying out its statutory duty and courting and maintaining the support and cooperation of the people which is crucial to the success of its task.

We feel the pains of the Customs which has lost its officers and men to this fight against the vicious smugglers and also losing the needed support of the people due to the misconduct of few trigger-happy officers.

We believe however that the Customs could still salvage its image to earn the sympathy, empathy and support of the people in the course of carrying out its anti-smuggling duty.

The first step to achieving this, we believe, is to embark on complete and comprehensive overhaul of the entire anti-smuggling units of the Customs.

For us, something is fundamentally wrong with the orientation of the officers in the units.

There is  an urgent need to re-orientate these officers who are supposed to be specially trained to carry and use firearms.

The Customs authority should ensure that apart from training and retraining them on the use of firearms, their state of minds should be under constant scrutiny and ascertained to be stable at all time.

It is an officer with unstable mind who will shoot indiscriminately among unarmed innocent people under the illusion of wanting to arrest a smuggler and his contraband goods.

Arming an officer with gun who lacks prerequisite knowledge of arms -handling and the one with unstable mind is a recipe for disaster.

We find it unwise therefore for the authority to allow a preventable disaster to happen before it takes a fire brigade measure to mitigate the disaster.

Prevention, they say, is better and cheaper than cure.

We also notice with alarm some of the operational procedures of the anti-smuggling unit which we consider archaic, barbaric, outdated and pre-historic.

We could not situate the relevance, efficiency and efficacy of chasing smugglers all over the cities and markets, shooting indiscriminately within the context of modern technology-driven espionage and surveillance system.

What is the Customs doing with its helicopter which we believe could be deployed for aerial surveillance patrol of our vast but porous borders?

Can’t the Customs authority use drone technology of border surveillance?

The logic of the oft-repeated and worn-out argument that the service lacks the required manpower to man our vast borders takes flight in the face of the use of modern surveillance technology.

How do other countries, especially those member nations which are affiliated to the World Customs Organisation (WCO) of which Nigeria is a member, carry out their anti-smuggling operations with minimum fatality?

Under technical partnership, Nigeria Customs through collaboration with other member states of WCO could learn to fight smuggling with minimum casualties.

In addition, Customs could use credible intelligence to stalk, trace and track contraband goods or goods whose owners evaded duties to their destinations, seal and cordon off the place before evacuation.

This is a reasonable alternative to the “Shina Rambo” style of operations of these units whenever their operatives are on the trail of smuggled goods or goods whose owners committed infractions in the clearance procedures, which often leave avoidable heavy casualties.

Apart from the overhaul of the operational procedures of the anti-smuggling unit, the Customs Authority should deal with the corruption within the service generally.

We often wonder, as most Nigerians do, that how do some of these contraband goods escape from the heavy presence of officers at the regular ports and the border posts?

It is alleged that the illicit practice of smuggling is being aided and abetted by the officers at the border posts who have been heavily compromised by smugglers.

This explains why these smugglers become furious, vicious and deadly when accosted by the anti-smuggling officers which normally results to fatality.

Until this virus is flushed out or minimised among officers, there will continue to be fatal clashes between anti-smuggling officers and smugglers who may feel they have paid their way and will put up bloody resistance.

We are also worried that the Customs authority may have under-estimated the enormous challenges some of these government policies may pose for its anti-smuggling operations.

The policy on the ban of rice through the land borders, the high tariff slammed on the item at the ports and the much-criticised Auto policy have all combined to make smuggling an attractive option which naturally leads to high incidence of the illicit practice.

One would have thought that the Customs would modernise its anti-smuggling machine to cope with the level of sophistication in the smuggling activities.

We are therefore alarmed that the Customs Service is still resorting to the old, archaic and outdated method of invasion of market places looking for contraband goods, chasing smugglers round the country like a cat chasing a mouse and mounting road blocks where innocent people are harassed, killed and maimed.

We strongly advise the Customs authority  to upgrade its operational tactics and procedures in fighting smuggling that will lead to minimum fatality.

We also call on the federal government to empower the Customs authority to ensure that its antiquated and anti-people operational procedures in anti-smuggling operations are modernised and technology-driven.

We believe that if these changes are effected in the anti-smuggling operations of the Nigeria Customs Service, the agency will achieve far more successes than it currently recorded while it will also gain the empathy, support and cooperation of  Nigerians who would agree to be allies in the fight against the dare-devil smugglers.