Correspondence by Isaiah Okoche
In the smuggling underbelly, a consolidator is a next-level economic saboteur partly because they are not easy to detect but also because, if untamed, they can become a nuisance to fair traders. Consolidators use porous points of the border and the art of getting something into the country in small rations. Often, they can attempt to bring in a truckful of uncustomed products like rice using dozens of boda-boda riders.
In essence, you never see a truck crossing into the country from another but its content does find its way to a store.
The Malaba team busted a notorious consolidator of smuggled rice when one of his biker boys was tailed to a consolidation centre that the team had been investigating for weeks.
With the store well identified, the team stealthily raided the consolidation centre in the little-known Nabiganda sub-county, Butaleja district at dusk and recovered 180 bags of smuggled Sana rice and 50 bags of smuggled Mara rice.
Offence management is underway.
