Long queues remained up to past noon Thursday around filling stations in the Adamawa State capital, Yola, where petrol seized by the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) is being auctioned to members of the public.
Customs’s Operation Whirlwind which has been fighting against illegal diversion of petrol from Nigeria to neighbouring countries had held a news briefing earlier on Wednesday, October 9, announcing that the seized petrol would be auctioned.
It had risen from the press briefing at the Adamawa/Taraba Area Command headquarters in Yola to officially flag off the auction sale at the two designated stations.
The auction sale continued Thursday, with eager residents lining up their vehicles at the filling stations where the seized fuel was being sold at N630 per litre, as against the current prices of N1,030 at NNPC stations and about N1,250 at stations run by independent marketers in the state.
The Operation Whirlwind of the NCS had announced at its Wednesday briefing that it intercepted a total of 94,550 litres of petrol around international borderlines across the country, being fuel believed to be meant to be smuggled out of the country.
The Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adeniyi, said the seizures resulted from further anti-smuggling operations after he first addressed the media on the activities of the Operation Whirlwind in June this year.
The CGC, represented during the press briefing by an NCS deputy controller general, Olaniyi Olajugun, said the latest seizures were evidences of Customs’ determination to curtail smuggling or diversion of fuel from Nigerians into foreign markets.