The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has revealed that aside porous border situation, factors like marital status of smugglers, bad road networks across international borders and host communities’ dependence on smuggling, has fuelled petroleum smuggling as an attractive business venture along the nation’s international borders.

Speaking with the Nigerian Tribune at the weekend, spokesman of the Seme Customs Command, Superintendent of Customs Tunde Ayagbalo, explained that sometimes, due to bad road networks, chasing smugglers posed a severe challenge for the NCS.

“One of the major challenges we face stopping petroleum smuggling is bad road networks. The routes the smugglers take can be unmotorable,” Ayagbalo said.

“The smugglers navigate these bad roads with motorcycles. 100 motorcycles can move at different times with these products.

“Aside from using bad routes to cross smuggled petroleum products, they also carry the products through the creeks at night. And you know what it takes to maintain checkpoints on the waterways.

“That is why Customs is beginning to look at deploying drones to help us maintain permanent oversight of our international borders, both land and waterways.

“According to the NCS spokesman, another issue is dependence of host communities on smuggling as a way of making ends meet.

“These border communities’ residents will tell you they don’t have industries or companies situated within their communities, so they have no other job than to smuggle petrol and other products.

“That is why the Service keeps sensitising residents of border communities on the ills of smuggling in general,” he stated.

Also speaking further on the challenges confronting the Service in combating petroleum smuggling, the spokesman of the Idiroko Customs Command, Deputy Superintendent of Customs, Chado Zakari, explained that some smugglers deliberately marry two wives from both sides of the Nigerian-Benin Republic border to carry out their illicit activities.

“The porosity of the Nigerian-Benin Republic border is complex. There are some communities where we have houses located in between both countries,’’ he said.

“In such communities, the living room of the house will be in Nigeria, while the bedroom of the same house will be in Benin Republic. Tell me, how do you stop smuggling from taking place in such an environment?

“We have had instances where we arrested smugglers, who move this product in small quantity, claiming they are moving it for domestic use. From our investigation, these smugglers have two wives. One wife will be in Idiroko in Nigeria, while the second wife will be in Igollo, in Republic of Benin, he said.

“The husband will now be shuttling between both houses with these petroleum products, claiming it’s for domestic use. You know the movement of small quantity of petroleum products is not a crime if it’s not for commercial purposes. How do you now combat such smuggling?

“The Service can only suppress smuggling. I doubt if it can be eradicated.

We have been able to establish good relationship with most of the traditional rulers of these border communities. We have also organised sports competitions, all in a bid to discourage smuggling,” he said.

Experts raise fresh concern, demand litre-by-litre tracking

Fresh concerns have emerged over the movement of petrol across Nigeria’s borders, with energy experts demanding electronic tracking of every litre from refineries and import terminals to filling stations to determine the volume actually consumed locally.

The experts said Nigeria’s inability to accurately account for petrol throughout the domestic supply chain had made it difficult to establish the true scale of cross-border smuggling and the financial losses arising from the illegal movement of the product.

Analysis of the latest data from the Nigerian Midstream and Downstream Petroleum Regulatory Authority showed that an estimated 12.29 billion litres of Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) were consumed between January and August this year.

However, an energy expert, Chike Nwosu, said his estimate for 2022/23 indicated that actual domestic consumption could have been only 50 to 60 per cent of the officially quoted figures at the time.

“My estimate in 2022/23 was that our actual domestic consumption was 50-60 per cent of the quoted figures, meaning almost half of the products were leaving our borders,” Nwosu, a member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, said.

He, however, stressed that the estimate related specifically to 2022/23 and should not be interpreted as a current measurement of petrol smuggling.

Rather, he said the figures demonstrated the urgent need for a more reliable system for determining domestic consumption and tracing petroleum products after they enter the supply chain.

His comments came against the backdrop of renewed interceptions of petrol allegedly being moved illegally across Nigeria’s borders.

Similarly, Professor Emeritus of Petroleum Economics at the LSU Energy Institute, Professor Wumi Iledare, said Nigeria’s priority should be to establish a credible system for tracking petroleum products throughout the domestic supply chain.

Iledare said every litre of petrol imported or refined for domestic consumption should be electronically tracked from the point of production or importation to the final point of sale.

However, a former Managing Director of 11 Plc, Adetunji Oyebanji, disputed descriptions of current petrol smuggling as “uncontrolled”.

Oyebanji said the situation was different from the subsidy era, when heavily subsidised petrol created a much stronger incentive for diversion.

He said appropriate pricing remained important in reducing market distortions, noting that petrol prices in some neighbouring countries were higher partly because of taxes and other charges. (Nigerian Tribune)