Is the Senate on vendetta mission against the Comptroller-General of the Nigerian Customs Service, Hameed Ali? This seems exactly to be the case according to reports in the Sahara Reporters.
The Senate’s beef against the Customs chief was not borne out of concern for public good over the Customs’ policy of duty payment over old vehicles in the country but because of the alleged seizure of the Senate president’s Range Rover Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV).
It was reported that officials of the Nigeria Customs service seized a bulletproof Range Rover Sports Utility Vehicle (SUV) owned by Senate President Bukola Saraki.
The Range Rover SUV was impounded on January 11, 2017 in Lagos after it was discovered that carried documents that claimed its chassis number was “SALGV3TF3EA190243.”
The car valued at N298 million is expected to have paid customs duty of N74 million. When the driver of the SUV was intercepted, he was reported to have claimed that the vehicle belonged to the Senate President Bukola Saraki and presented a letter from the National Assembly liaison office in Lagos.
A source of Sahara Reporters said when asked to show evidence of duty payment and an end-user certificate from the office of the National Security Adviser—a document required for bulletproof vehicles—the driver presented documents that were found to be fake.
The allegedly fake documents provided by the driver reportedly indicated that N8 million custom fee was paid instead of the N74 million legally required.
Customs officials said that apart from the fact the customs duty was extremely low, they also determined that the presented document itself was fake and so the vehicle was seized.
Investigations reportedly done by Sahara Reporters showed that the documents used by Saraki and the National Assembly to clear the car impounded by the Nigerian Customs did not belong to the vehicle.
Also, there were allegations by the investigators that Senator Saraki and the National Assembly apparently undervalued the car by more than 50% to enable them to avoid paying proper customs duty.
