Officials of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) assaulted staff members of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) filling station at the Honda Bus Stop in Ota, Ogun State, on Friday, FIJ has gathered.
FIJ learned that the customs officers took umbrage and threatened to shoot after a staff member of the filling station asked for N100 charges for their transaction on the point-of-sale machine.
An eyewitness said that the angry Nigerian customs officers beat up the NNPC’s station supervisor and injured a customer.
She said that the point-of-sale merchant at the station had told the customs officers, who wanted to fill up their tank with fuel worth N30,000, that if they paid with an ATM card all at once, they would have to add N100 for bank charges.
According to the eyewitness, the attendant explained that if the officers were willing to allow her to withdraw N15,000 twice, they would incur no charges, as only transactions of N20,000 and above attracted such.
“As the officers were arguing with the lady, the male attendant trying to sell the fuel to the officers chimed in to explain that the filling station was not benefiting from the charges, as it belongs to Moniepoint, the filling station’s bank, but that made their hackles rise,” the eyewitness said.
“They got so angry that one of them hit the male attendant with a gun. In an attempt to parry the gun, he sustained an injury to his arm. In fear, the attendant ran away.”
She said the customs officers asked the PoS merchant, who was now afraid, not to leave. At that point, she said, the officers then began pointing the gun at other filling station attendants, saying, “You’re all thieves. Is that what Nigeria asked you to do?”
The officers began to cock their guns and charge at everyone at the filling station, so both customers and staffers fled the premises, except a customer who had a flat tyre.
They beat the customer and broke his phone. They said he was recording them, but he was only calling someone to bring some tyres to him. He had to beg them, rolling on the floor, before they let him go,” she said.
“And while doing this, they kept asking for the manager of the filling station. At this time, she didn’t face them but ran to a nearby police station to report the matter. In place of the manager, they beat the supervisor, thinking he was the general manager.
“They started saying they came here and asked the attendants to sell inside kegs but they refused and now wanted to collect money for charges. They called the attendants thieves.”
She said that the filling station’s general manager returned from the Obasanjo Onipanu police station with four policemen.
The team leader of the police spoke with the commander of the customs officers.
“After their discussion, the police officer told her to forgive the erring officers. She immediately said the action of the customs officers was unfair because her staffers did nothing wrong,” the eyewitness said.
“They then asked her why she didn’t show up when they were asking for the manager of the filling station. She told them it was impossible to confront them at the time as the manager because they were armed, which was why she reported to the police instead.
“One of the customs officers said, ‘As you have reported, what do you now want to happen? We cocked our guns, so what do you want to do?’ While they were shouting, people took her away from their midst and back to the station. When they were ready to buy, the attendants refused to sell to them, so they just had to leave the compound.”
Based on the eyewitness’ discussions with the attendants, she believed that the customs officers acted irresponsibly because, on the previous Monday and Tuesday, they refused to sell fuel to them in jerrycans.
When FIJ called the Nigeria Customs Service via the phone number displayed on its Facebook page, they said they had yet to hear of this matter. They asked this reporter to go to the Ogun State Command of the Nigeria Customs Service for information.
