CONTRARY to reports in some national newspapers, the Chief Executive Officer of Sam Express Cargo Services Limited, Mr. Samuel Chinedum Madubike, has said that he was not in any way involved in the Sambo Dasuki’s arms deal, stressing that those behind the reports wanted to create bad blood between him and the current Comptroller General of Customs.
  
Some newspapers, (The Guardian, not included) had reported that the businessman was involved in the arms fund deal for which the former National Security Adviser (NSA) Col. Sambo Dasuki is being investigated by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC).
  
But in an exclusive interaction with The Guardian, Madubike contended that there was no way a clearing agent whose area of operation is mainly at the Seme border, can deal on arms.
  
“Goods come on transit from Benin Republic or Togo. Before they get to Seme border, if they are from Ghana, they go through Togo.

They investigate it and duties are paid. The same thing happens in Cotonou before it comes to the border. These goods do not come in containers, but open trucks. So, where would the arms come from,” he queried.
 
Madubuike explained that there is a retinue of officers at Seme border, ranging from Police, Anti-bomb squad, Military intelligence, Customs and Immigration, who examine and certify that goods are free to come in, saying there was no way arms can escape the vigilance of those officials.
  
He recalled that around 2006 and 2007, an association that calls itself National Taskforce On Light Arms, came and pushed to be allowed to stay on the highway to search vehicles, but to the chagrin of officers, members of the association were all civilians without training or equipment to check light arms.
 
Narrating how he got into the bad books of alleged sponsors of the false reports, Madubike added:  “We chased them away. This happened under the leadership of the then controller, Alhaji Dikko, who later became the Comptroller General. I was the secretary then and most of the responsibilities of the chairman were on my table. It is only those I cannot handle that I gave to him. I used the association task force, with the assistance of soldiers and the Police, after writing some petitions to get them off the roads.
 
“Since then, they marked me as their enemy. So, they came back last year and told the controller that they want to mount checkpoint. I told the controller that this people have been here in 2007 and were chased away, that they have nothing to offer. Moreover, the agencies that are related in clearing have been mentioned in Customs book.”
  
The Customs chief disclosed that when the people found that Dikko and other officers he petitioned against had gone, “they decided to incriminate me and my company by writing that I am a clearing agent for Dasuki when I have never met or know Dasuki.”