’’I adopted measures to punish cadet officers while I was head of the Customs Training School in Ikeja, instead of reporting them to the headquarters. As a father, I adopted different methods of punishing officers which include locking them up in the cell", so says the former Commandant of the Customs Training College in Ikeja, Lagos, Compt. Sanni Magudu.
Magudu who is currently the Comptroller of the Federal Operations Unit, Zone 'A' of Customs said that thousands of serving customs officers had passed through him in at the training college. He spoke at a recent media parley in Lagos.
He said that his greatest joy in his 27 years carrier as a customs officer is that today, whenever he walks into any customs command, he sees his officer working and being productive for the customs service.
Recounting his stay at the College, he said: “I was able to train (at a go) 1,250 cadets at one time, and from the beginning of the training to the end, we were able to pass them out all through, I did not dismiss anyone, it was not a bed of roses because it was not easy"
"Somebody committed an offence, I locked him in the cell, if your offence is beyond cell, I will come up with an idea, another person came up and he was stealing handsets from his colleagues and I handcuffed him and asked him to carry a plastic in front of the class room where people entering will see him in handcuff"
"This sent a lot of signal to the cadets. After a whole day; morning till evening he was handcuffed, we only removed the handcuffs for him to eat, after a while we discharged him to go back, till he passed out of the college he never stole a pin"
"Cadets got their salaries while they were on training, some of them started misbehaving, they had outing and some of them came back dead drunk, when they came back we put them in the cell"
"I left them there for two days, we were not trying to destroy them, the then Comptroller General brought them to me raw and we moulded them, they became refined and commissioned as customs officers", he narrated.
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