A FAILED bid to smuggle a bus filled with rice into Nigeria at the weekend left seven people dead, including two customs officers set ablaze with petrol.

Two patrol officers along the northern border with Niger were late on Friday torched to death by a rampaging mob awaiting the contraband rice after five smugglers died in a car accident as they followed the impounded goods at Kongolam village in Katsina state.

"Two of our men were doused with petrol and burnt to death along with their patrol vehicle by a rioting mob ... who were protesting the death of five smugglers from the town in an accident," Katsina state customs spokesman Awwal Giyade said.

"The five smugglers died when the car they were driving in fell into a ditch while pursuing the officers that seized their luxury bus loaded with the rice they smuggled into Nigeria through the border with Niger," Mr Giyade added.

He said the dead smugglers' colleagues, estimated to have been in the dozens, vented their anger on a three-men border patrol team on routine duty.

The three initially managed to flee into Niger, but the mob overpowered the Niger border gendarmes in Maimoujiya village, where the customs officers sought refuge, doused them with petrol and burnt them to death along with their patrol vehicle, Mr Giyade said.

One customs officer survived the attack with serious injuries, Mr Giyade said, without giving details of the nature of the injuries.

"Army and police personnel have been deployed to the border town to forestall further unrest," Giyade said.