Last month, a video went viral showing a man almost going berserk, threatening to show an official of the Nigerian Customs Service his powers and connections for daring to stop his goods from coming into the country through the Ilaro border end.
In the video, the official who claimed threats to his life by the raging man, could be heard demanding what offence he had committed with the interception of smuggled goods belonging to the man who left nothing to tell the Customs official he would make him regret being posted to that border post.
The man, who would later be identified as Ibrahim Dende Egungbohun, with the sobriquet IBD Dende, is said to be well known for many years of alleged smuggling activities across the border areas of Ilaro and its environs.
At his beck and call are alleged to be a wide network of highly compromised state officials who are more loyal to their self-aggrandizement than to the sanctity of the mandate they carry to protect the Nigerian borders.
IBD Dende has countered claims of being a smuggler in some statements put out after the release of the video. Those who have benefitted from his philanthropy have also painted him well arguing that he is a mere businessman doing his thing his own way.
Unwittingly, IBD Dende had insinuated that even senior Nigerian Customs Service officials are themselves involved in smuggling. Many who have seen the video conclude that the “Wale” that IBD Dende referred to out of anger is no other person than the Comptroller General, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, whose goods he alleged were allowed to come in while his own were intercepted.
From what we have learnt further about IBD Dende, he has become an ‘institution’ of a sort in the area, to the point he could challenge free passage granted smuggled goods allegedly belonging to the Customs bosses.
As a philanthropist, he is believed to be making the locales happy with a wide range of community good gestures like scholarship, community facilities like boreholes, helping indigent people solve immediate financial problems and others that have endeared him to many.
He is also widely connected within the social circles of praise-singing musicians and motor park controllers in Ogun and Lagos. When he clocked 50 last year, King Wasiu Ayinde Marshal was on hand to thrill his fans in the presence of a huge collection of monied young people.
All these he does from the very vast wealth he has garnered. In some quarters, IBD Dende is believed to be worth more than N70bn in cash and assets.
Those who know IBD Dende define him as unsparing in executing his business missions and ensuring that he stays afloat all the time.
Since the video earlier mentioned went viral, thanks to the undercover activities of a Nigerian journalist, Fisayo Soyombo, a number of other air-splitting revelations and allegations have been made by him about the sleaze at the border towns and the criminal conspiracies, collaborations and the yummy, family-affairs spirit between smugglers and those employed and paid through taxpayer’s funds to prevent economic sabotage.
Just two days ago, he revealed that Customs officers led by one a senior official, broke into a house in Oja-Odan at 2 a.m. or thereabouts, carting away 155 bags of rice.
“Unbeknownst to Odion and co, the owners of the rice bags detailed someone to track the movement of the loot.
“The discovery: not one of the 155 bags of rice ended up at the Customs office in Idi-Iroko or Ikeja! Instead, the Customs officers facilitated their sale at the Sango market for more than N9 million,” Soyombo had alleged in an X post.
A day after, he followed up with another revelation of the alleged smuggling of some high-end vehicles into the country with an expected total sum of half a billion Naira. With that were, according to him, some other packages the content of which remain shrouded.
Before that, he had exposed a number of hotels and hospitality businessses located around the border towns which, according to his investigations, are owned by senior customs officers.
Apart from the question of the sources of money for these multi-million Naira hotels, they are reported to have become Special Purpose Vehicles to provide covers for unholy alliances and meetings of smuglling kingpins and their official collaborators.
Soyombo was specific about owners of these hotels as he named known officers of the agency that own them.
Till date, while Soyombo has continued to breath down the neck of the Nigerian Customs Service with one mind-boggling revelation or the other, there has been a loud silence from the Nigerian Customs Service and other authorities over these revelations.
Not even the Service or its boss has found it imperative to speak up over IBD Dende’s quaking suggestion that the leadership of the Customs is complicit.
We are also miffed that a month after that video went out, there has not been any arrest over threats to life of an officer who was simply carrying out his duty.
The Nigerian Customs Service stands critical to the country’s development.
As a revenue generating agency of no small dimension, crippling its potential via underhand deals with those it is set up to pursue is directly inimical to the financial health of the country.
In January this year, the Comptroller General of Customs told the House of Representatives that his agency generated a sum of N3.21 trillion in 2023. That was a better performance compared to the 2022’s N2.64trillion which was raked in by the Service.
But then, the implication of the various reported sleazy affairs between officials of the agency and smuglers is that Nigeria could get much more if the ‘love affair’ between the two is broken.
With that in mind, we expect that the many allegations against the service and its officials ought to have gotten the attentions of the Senate, the House of Representatives, the Ministry of Finance, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, the Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Allied Offences Commission and indeed the Presidency.
Is the matter under investigation? Has IBD Dende been invited to explain his threats of an officer? Or is it the threatened officer that is fighting to retain his job for rattling established ‘sacred cows?”
Rather, we find it incongrous that the chairman of Soyombo’s Foundation for Investigative Journalism, was mandated by the Nigeria Police.
to produce him.
Interestingly, the Nigerian Customs Service has as its motto “Justice and Honesty.” This credo goes to the heart of the matter in question here. It’s officials must be honest in carrying out their duties at all times. The organisation must as a duty, be just in its dealings. Even in the face of all allegations, should IBD Dende be found to be a victim of injustice, he must get his justice except that the viral video where he was seen threatening an official for carrying out his duty looks well to give him away as being guilty as alleged.
The journalist who helped the society to uncover illicit behaviours is in hiding when those he exposed are assumed to be free and possibly perfecting plans to ‘teach’ the nosy journalist the lesson of his life for ‘poking his nose into affairs that do not concern him.’ This is not justice?
We should think that the Ministry of Finance for example, should be more interested in the expose provided by Soyombo as this has direct benefits to its drive for revenues in the country.
The National Assembly, with oversight functions at the Upper and Lower chambers have been curiously silent. Indeed, there are members of those chambers whose constituencies and senatorial districts are located in the areas where Dende and the customs officials are accused of fanning their relationships. They should take more than passing interests in what happens in their constituencies.
The Presidency has the overall responsibility to call all those concerned to order. One month of such revelations with no official action seems to encourage bad behaviours.
This is because the stench of those revelations hangs in the air stubbornly. Unless dealt with and the Service sanitised, the impression out there would be that the administration does not really care what criminally minded businessmen do with constituted authorities and whether their officials are completely bought over or not.