Nigeria Customs Services (NCS) has ramped up efforts to curtail smuggling with a directive to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC), Petroleum Products Pricing Regulatory Agency (PPPRA) and all relevant agencies to suspend fuel supply to petrol stations within 20 kilometres of Nigeria’s borders with neighbouring West African countries.

The directive is in furtherance of the ongoing bid by the federal government to drastically curb smuggling that led to the closure of the country’s land borders with its neighbouring West African countries.

Both NCS and NNPC had claimed that much of the imported petrol, being subsidised for domestic consumption, was often smuggled to these neighbouring countries and sold at premium price.

When NCS initially announced the border closure, NNPC reported a reduction in daily trucking of petrol from tank farms in the country, thus validating the claim that the border closure had an effect on smuggling of petrol.

Thisday