Turkish Envoy Collaborates With Customs To Stop Arms Shipment

Hakan Cakil reached an agreement at a meeting with the Comptroller-General of Customs, retired Colonel Hameed Ali.

Turkish Ambassador to Nigeria is collaborating with the Nigeria Custom Service to stop the shipment of arms from Turkey.

Hakan Cakil reached an agreement at a meeting with the Comptroller-General of Customs, retired Colonel Hameed Ali, on Tuesday.

Ali announced the cooperation in a statement by the spokesman for Customs, Joseph Attah.

Concerns had increased after a fourth container of firearms was seized at the ports last week.

The 4 of them originated from Turkey.
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Ali had at the meeting expressed concern that the 4 seizures with a total number of 2,671 pump action riffles came from one source.

According to Attah, the meeting lasted for about 2 hours.

He said: “The meeting ended with both sides agreeing to work together to stop the dangerous trend.

“Both agreed to use the situation as opportunity to strengthen ties to prevent the use of either country as a base for export of harmful items to the other.

”All the 4 shipments intercepted were false declarations on the bill of lading , it is a clear case of smuggling.

”The Turkish ambassador will immediately communicate to his home with the view to fishing out criminals behind the illegal arms shipment to Nigeria”.

Mr Cakil had expressed his country’s support for Nigeria’s security and well being, saying that Turkey would not support any dangerous shipment to Nigeria.

A team of Nigerian Customs will visit the Turkish Customs to further discuss ways of nipping such arms export from Turkey and strengthening agreement on mutual customs-to-customs assistance.

The Nigeria Customs will provide for the Turkish authority list of prohibited items and in the case of arms, sample of end user certificate to enable them to always verify before approving any legal arms export to Nigeria.