Daily Independent Online.
*
Thursday, July 01, 2004.
Cargo
theft: NAHCO boss, five others arrested
By Walter Ukaegbu
Maritime
Correspondent
and Rotimi Durojaiye,
Aviation
Correspondent,
Lagos
The disappearance of 270 out of 395 cartons
and packages of imported assorted goods worth millions of naira, has led to the
arrest and detention of the General Manager of Nigerian Aviation Handling
Company Limited (NAHCO), Mr. Musa Agboneni and five other top officials of the
company.
Customs sources told Daily Independent in Lagos that the
goods, which were flown into the country by a foreign airline, were missing
from the NAHCO warehouse where they were stored last week.
Others said to have been arrested along
with the NAHCO boss on Thursday last week were the Deputy General Manager,
Mr.Olu Afolabi and four other senior managers in charge of operations, cargo
shed, warehouse and security.
While NAHCO management denied any theft of
cargo from the warehouse and the arrest of any of its officials, customs
spokesman, Wale Adeniyi, confirmed the arrests in a telephone interview with
Daily Independent.
NAHCO said in a press statement signed by
one Obuke Oyibotha, “The cargo being referred to as missing or stolen
were duly cleared and released by men of the Customs in the normal course of
business.”
However, Adeniyi said the matter was still
being investigated.
The NAHCO chiefs were said to have
disappeared immediately the cat was let out of the bag, but were later
apprehended by enforcement and investigation officers of the Nigeria Customs
Service (NCS).
It was gathered that when the Customs unit
at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos, discovered that the goods
were missing from the warehouse, they quickly alerted the headquarters in
Abuja, where two Assistant Comptrollers-General were asked to proceed to Lagos
and take over the investigations.
