There is fear and jittery in the top hierarchy of the Nigeria Customs Service as the new Comptroller General goes to work with the clear mandate of President Muhammadu Buhari to clean the paramilitary agency seen by many as a cesspit of corruption in Nigeria.
The new Comptroller General of Customs, Hameed Ali, has purportedly requested for the files of senior officers of the service. The new Comptroller General of the NCS, while addressing top officers of the service in Abuja last week reminded them of his presidential mandate to restructure, reform and increase revenue generation while he holds sway at the service.
To achieve all this, it is believed that the new Customs boss will have to flush out corrupt officers from the service. Ali has commenced the process of scrutinizing files of top officers of the service as well as looking into petitions written against some employees. Some of the petitions written against the employees has to do with cases of illegal sales of seized goods by officers of the service.
The new comptroller general is also expected to investigate violations of rules and regulations on clearance of goods as well as false declarations and misapplication of tariffs.
In 2004, under the then President Olusegun Obasanjo’s “reformed and restructured” the Customs by sweeping away the then acting Comptroller General, Tayo Ogungbemile, who just took over from Mustapha Aliyu that retired. Also affected in the “reform” were all Deputy Comptrollers General (DCG) (six of them), 13 out of 17 Assistant Comptrollers General (ACG) and 75 Comptrollers. By the time the dust had settled, Buba Gyang emerged as the CGC, even though he was formerly an ACG.
President Buhari, it was learnt, found it difficult to pick a successor among the senior officers of the service because security checks on them revealed many are stupendously rich far above their legitimate earnings with cash and assets stashed across the country and overseas.
