The safety of a group of three men providing intelligence to an anti-smuggling team of the Nigeria Customs Services (NCS) in Ogun State was compromised after they reported smuggling activities on Tuesday.

The men were providing intelligence to the border officials stationed to monitor smugglers in the Idi-Iroko region of Ogun.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, a tip-off provided by these informants led to the confiscation of some goods in the area, as revealed in a post on X by ‘Fisayo Soyombo, FIJ’s editor-in-chief, on Tuesday.

“The three men you see in this video were involved in alerting your men to the smuggled rice and petrol seized by your men overnight last Tuesday to Wednesday in Oja-Odan,” Soyombo posted at the NCS on Tuesday.

Following the confiscation, people believed to be smugglers or their sympathisers mercilessly brutalised the informants. Soyombo questioned how the identities of these men gathering critical information for the border personnel were revealed to the smugglers.

“Can you then explain how the identities of these men who tipped you off about the crime became known to smugglers, consequently earning them the beating of their lives?” he asked.

“What does it say about your supposed anti-smuggling war that tipping you off is no different from tipping smugglers off? Who are the Customs officers who snitched on their colleagues and on these men?

“Will you ever find the thugs who dehumanised and tortured their fellow humans in this manner or will they go scot-free?”

In the visuals attached to the tweet, the assaulters questioned two of the informants on how they alerted the authorities and their motivation.

The smugglers stripped one of the three men naked in an enclosure where they beat him. FIJ transcribed and translated the interrogation which was done in Yoruba.

Smugglers: What did they do at Oja-Odan?

Naked informant: They seized goods.

Smuggler: Who seized the goods?

Naked informant: Customs.

Smugglers: Who phoned Customs to come and seize the goods?

Naked informant: We were the ones.

The smugglers’ conversation with the second informant goes thus:

Smugglers: What job do you do?

Informant: I work as a Customs informant.

Smugglers: Which Hilux vehicle did you drive?

Informant: The third one, (pointing to the front.)

Smugglers: Where do you hail from?

Informant: I hail from Owode. [ a community in the state]

Smugglers: You and who came to carry the goods away?

Informant: Myself and Ade Layo.

Smugglers: Whose account will they send your pay to?

Informant: On that, I must be sincere to you. We have become one and they no longer pay us. They used to send us money through that brother’s account number (pointing to his front).

Smugglers: But if you ask, would they tip you?

Informant: No. I cannot lie to you. Nobody even asks them for money again.

Smugglers: What did you discuss with them yesterday? They said they would send you money this morning?

Informant: No. They said we should go and that they would call us this morning.

Smugglers: Whose number will they call?

Informant: They might call my number or his number (pointing ahead).

Smugglers: Wait a moment, you will call that Customs [officer] now.

On Tuesday, FIJ called Abdullahi Maiwada, the NCS spokesperson.

He said he was learning about the assault on the informants for the first time.

“I am just hearing it from you and I will find out from the operation command because this is an operational issue,” said Maiwada.

“Definitely, we will put all mechanisms into place to find out how it happened. Whatever we find, we are going to take appropriate action.”

FIJ had reported how some NCS officers aid smuggling of foods items, arms and ammunition, ultimately jeoparding Nigeria’s local economy and national security.