Since his appointment by President Muhammadu Buhari as the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs, Col Hameed Alli (rtd) has never hidden his disdain for what the Service has become. By his perception, the Service is riddled with corruption and peopled by corrupt personnel. Little wonder, his mantra has been zero tolerance for corruption. He has threatened to jail any officer who is caught in the act.
To underscore his negative perception of the Customs that he has come to head, he pointedly told bewildered officers last week at the FCT Command that they were corrupt and he was prepared to catch and ‘slaughter’ scapegoats! These were his words: “The general view of the public is that customs is the most undisciplined and corrupt service because of the nature of our job that needs to be addressed.
“You are not in customs to make money and enrich yourself but to work hard because if you are caught you must face the law.
“None of you should make me use you as an example; if your intention is to be corrupt then you cannot survive this time around.
“No more god-fatherism in customs; you will earn promotion, not get promotion and for you to earn it, you must attain the qualification based on performance evaluation”.
The emergence of Col Ali was certainly as a result of President Buhari’s belief that the Nigeria Customs Service can no longer be trusted in the hands of an ‘insider’ as the Comptroller General.
Of course, this is not the first time that Customs would be headed by ‘an outsider’, that is a non-customs officer. But unlike what led to the appointment of Col Ali, it was the fierce battle for the plum job of Customs CG that led to the appointment of Veterinary Doctor Bello Mohammed and later Brig General Samuel Ango in 1988 and 1994 respectively.
The appointment of Doctor Bello Mohammed in 1988 as the sixth Customs boss was on account of the fierce battle for succession. The appointment of his successor; Brig. General Samuel Ango in 1994 as the Sole Administrator also came about as result of the intense fight between top officers. The traditional fight also continued immediately news filtered out that Ango was to be removed. Eventually Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu Mustapha emerged as the eight Customs Comptroller General. He served between 1999 and 2003.
Disregard for seniority in the appointment of Comptroller General of Customs has been a recurring issue since the exit of Alhaji Ahmed Mustapha. His successor Elder Jacob Gyang Buba was appointed from the rank of assistant comptrollers general, so also was Buba’s successor, Alhaji Hamman Bello Ahmed. These two were made instant substantive Comptrollers General. Because, the Federal Government was not quite prepared for his exit, it had problems appointing a substantive successor. This led to the interregnum of about five months during which Deputy Comptroller General Tayo Ogungbemile stood in as the acting Comptroller General.
Then came Jacob Gyang Buba as substantive Comptroller General between 2004 and 2008; paving way for the emergence of Hamman Bello Ahmed whose exit made it possible for Dr Bernard-Shaw Nwadialo to be appointed as acting Comptroller General. The appointment immediate past CG; Alhaji Dikko Abdulahi Indemay go down in history as the least controversial and the one that came with the least mudslinging that is usually associated with appointments of the Comptroller General, Customs.
Upon his appointment as the Customs boss, it was said variously that Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko got it because he was highly favoured far and above both his seniors and contemporaries, having only about two years before then been promoted from the Seme border command where he was area controller to the rank of an assistant comptroller general (ACG) of Customs. It is hereby recalled that by his appointment, many senior and management officers of the service were shown the way out of service, albeit prematurely. These include scores of comptrollers, many assistant comptrollers general and all the deputy comptrollers general.
Even though the various actions of the current CG since assumption of office appear not to be popular with stakeholders who interface with the Service’s personnel on daily basis, but they appear united in their assertion that the Nigeria Customs Service is corrupt and that officers who are currently being retired deserve to leave the service. Our concern as a maritime media organisation is that, while the new CG is looking for corrupt officers, he losing sight of the fact that in a democracy, you can only accuse and allege, it only the court that can convict and we dare say that in Nigeria, the process can be frustrating. Rather than make anti- corrupt his sing-song, we would rather he goes about his work quietly, without carrying the sword with him everywhere he goes.
The Nigeria Customs Service is one of many stakeholders in the cargo clearance and delivery process.
Apart from the jail threats that the military Comptroller General is synonymous with, the gale of retirements has further confirmed that Col Ali has phobia for experience. Except there are other reasons that are unknown to all, the recent disrespectful forceful retirement of Deputy Comptrollers General rubbishes the integrity of all those who have put in decades in the service of their fatherland.
This quote from recent press statement from the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) accentuates the danger in arbitrary retirement of management and senior officers of Customs.
The association warned that: “We must appreciate the fact that Customs officers like other civil servants are in contract with the Federal Government of Nigeria and therefore there must be restraint the way they are forcefully retired without reaching the mandatory date and time of tenureship”. We advise that the current ’tsunami’ that is ravaging Customs should not be allowed to destroy the service.
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