CUSTOMS ANNUAL COMPTROLLER GENERAL’S CONFERENCE IS TOO MUCH TALK, LESS ACTION
I n our editorial opinion of ……, we argued that the annual Customs Comptroller General’s conference has lost focus, stopped meeting its objectives and has thus become worse than a town hall meeting. We slightly fell short of calling for its scrapping. We recall that after the editorial, we received some calls from those who felt that the editorial was in bad taste. We were called names. But today, we have been vindicated
So, when we scooped last week that the incumbent Customs boss, Alhaji Hamman Bello Ahmed has decided to scrap the annual event, it was a further vindication of our stand that what the conference had turned out to be is certainly not what Alhaji Ahmed Mustapha conceived about eight years ago. We reproduce below that editorial which has tuned out to be a prophecy, of sort.
With the conclusion of the last Customs Comptroller General’s Annual Conference in Sokoto, Sokoto state, top officers of the Service are back on their beats waiting for another conference in year 2008.
The idea of a yearly conference was introduced by the immediate past Customs Comptroller General, Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu Mustapha in year 2000 as a way of taking stock of the out-going year and tasking its personnel for the in-coming year.
Before Sokoto 2007, the conference has been held in all the nation’s geopolitical zones. Cities like Port Harcourt, Kano, Ibadan, Owerri, Calabar, Jos, and Otta have had the privilege of playing hosts to customs and its stakeholders in what has now become an annual ritual, of sort.
We are sure that when the former customs number one man initiated the conference, he probably thought he was creating a platform for top shots in the service to frankly appraise themselves within the context of the expected role of the Nigeria Customs Service first as a revenue collector and lately as a trade facilitator.
Various issues bordering on customs operations, rights, legal and fiscal policy restrictions as well as inter agency relationships have at different time s within the past eight (or so) years that the conference has been instituted have been discussed, the latest being the much-talked-about, but, seemingly-unachievable need to clear goods from the ports within 48 hours after their arrival.
Every year, stakeholders from shipping to manufacturing to port and border operations including sister government agencies converge on cities chosen by the Customs to proffer solutions to how best to help the customs do its work better.
The stakeholders’ forum has in recent years become a veritable opportunity for all those who have grievances to let it out. But, to what extent has this achieved the purpose, considering the fact that there was nothing like such a forum when the conference was initiated.
A good innovation the stakeholders’ forum is, but it has turned out worse than a town hall meeting where all spoke, but none acted.
For the Customs conference to be more relevant and be taken more seriously, as a forum for genuine self appraisal of the service and cross-fertilization of ideas, it must be redesigned and refocused.
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