A group of police officers believed to be under the Inspector General of Police Special Squad on Wednesday, August 9, arrested some Policemen and operatives of the Nigeria Immigration Service, NIS, during a raid on illegal checkpoints on the Seme-Badagry Expressway.
The IGP squad chased and arrested some police officers and other security agents found at some of the checkpoints, believed to have been created purely to extort.
Vanguard reported that the activities of the illegal checkpoints have led to all manners of disruptions of movements of goods and people, and believed to have also hindered trade facilitation, apart from the negative image such action exposes the country before the regional and continental community.
While this may not be unconnected to the recent meeting between the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adeniyi and IGP, Mr. Kayode Egbetokun, and their resolve to free the axis, which serves as the Lagos-Abidjan corridor of illegal checkpoints, it’s been gathered that the raid would be sustained until bad eggs within the respective agencies responsible for the blight are completely removed through sanctions and punishments.
A Customs broker based at Seme who commented on the development, told the publication;
“The maritime police command has since appropriated part of customs job by blocking manifests. They order shipping companies not to release manifests and such tendencies have become entrenched.
“They even impound containers on the road and take them to their premises around Obalande. We want the IGP to help us beam its searchlight here too. There is so much extortion going on at the maritime command. They should be fighting maritime crimes and should be stopped from taking over customs job.”