The Nigeria Customs Service has disclosed that it will commission its first- class staff college that is expected to serve Nigeria and other sister customs national administrations within the West and Central African sub-Region in about four months time.
Comptroller General of Customs, Alhaji Inde Abdullahi Dikko disclosed this last week in Abuja at this year’s celebration of the International Customs Day (ICD).
The staff college which is sited at Gwagwalada in Abuja is already about 99 percent completed.
Dikko disclosed that Nigeria, like other countries of the world who are members of the World Customs Organisation (WCO) is ready to work by the theme of the 2011 celebration which is: "Knowledge: a catalyst for customs excellence", to ensure manpower development and capacity building in the customs service.
He told the gathering of customs officers and stakeholders at the event that the service has set aside a large chunk of its annual service budget in order to build a knowledge – based institution which will be up to date in information, communication and technology (ICT)
"We are currently building a staff college and we want it to be a regional college to serve West and Central Africa and it will be the best college in terms of staff training and development in the whole of Africa”, he assured.
The institution which has more than 150 residential chalets for officers who undergoing training, an e-library center, a squash facility centre, three large lecture theaters and auditorium among others is said to have been conceived by the Customs in 2004, but experienced delay in execution for two years.
Speaking further, Dikko disclosed that in consonance with the theme of the celebration for year 2010, the service in the preceding year, undertook several initiatives which included the enhancement of communication channels "between the service and the general trading and manufacturing sectors of our economy through their associations and groups".
Dikko who is also the chairman of the west and central Africa bloc under the World Customs Organisation (WCO) added that in the last one year, the Nigeria Customs Service has trained 8,000 out of its 16,000 workforce; both locally and abroad in areas of computer appreciation and others.
The celebration was also witnessed by customs officers from outside the country, including the deputy director general of the Swedish Customs, Mr. Lars Karlson who is also the former director of capacity building for the WCO.
Mr. Lars, who also spoke at the celebrations, noted that the job of customs officers around the world is becoming more tasking by the day and getting more important.
He therefore stressed the need for capacity development and training in order to be able to meet the present day challenge of maintaining security by the customs.
According to him "what customs do is important and it’s getting more and more important by the day because the challenges are getting bigger and bigger for all our countries and our economies".
"We have just been through a difficult time with the global financial crisis and we all know that all governments have security issues, the protection of the society and the protection of people gets high on the agenda for different reasons, and all this challenges we need to meet as customs officers, that is why we need to day by day develop our administrations" he said.
The customs boss also seized the opportunity to disclose that apart from training of customs officers and upgrading them to be ICT- compliant, the service also intends to embark on the training of all licensed clearing agents.
According to Dikko, the training is billed to commence in three weeks time.
It is expected to be extended to banking institutions as well as shipping and airfreight companies to enhance efficiency and trade facilitation.
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