Management of SGS Scanning Nigeria Limited, one of the destination inspection service providers has again been commended for the quality of training enjoyed by Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) personnel on secondment to the company.
Speaking at the impressive closing ceremony held recently at the company’s Lagos Office for the fifth batch of graduates under the NCS Secondment Programme, representative of the Comptroller General of Customs, Comptroller Adewole M.A., noted with satisfaction the capacity building efforts of SGS in line with its contractual obligations as a service provider under the DI scheme.
Comptroller Adewole who is also the Area Controller of the Lagos Airport Customs Command, charged the new graduates to be good ambassadors of Nigeria Customs Service in their future endeavours.
“On behalf of the Comptroller General of Customs, I congratulate you on the successful completion of this training. As you all are aware, capacity building is one of the six point agenda of the current leadership of Nigeria Customs and everything is being done by our Comptroller General Abdullahi Inde CFR, to transform the Service into an organisation all Nigerians would be proud of. It gladdens my heart that you all have more years to serve, you have become part of the foundation for the modern Customs Service through the knowledge gained by this training. I am happy knowing that there are well trained and competent officers coming behind us”, he said.
Mr. Muyiwa Olaniyan, Operations Manager of SGS Scanning Nigeria, on behalf of the company’s Managing Director Mr Nigel Balchin, reiterated his company’s commitment to capacity building and training of NCS personnel as well as other stakeholders in line with the agreement signed with the Federal Government.
He commended the trainees for their good conduct, professionalism and friendly disposition during the course of their programme, “I urge you all to put what you have learnt to good use for the benefit of Nigeria Customs Service and the Nigerian economy in general”, he said.
On behalf of the trainees, Assistant Comptroller of Customs Ba’aba and Chief Superintendent of Customs Bambale expressed gratitude to the Management of NCS for giving them the opportunity to participate in the programme. “We assure the Service that we are prepared for the challenges ahead. We thank Management of SGS, their excellent team of trainers and staff for being friendly and supportive, we say God bless to every one of them”.
The NCS Secondment Programme entails training related to price verification, classification and risk management. The goal is to acquaint participants with the requirements and process leading to the issuance of Risk Assessment Reports (RARs), a vital document required by traders to clear their imports from the nation’s ports and border stations.
Certificates were later presented to the nine officers that successfully completed the three months training by Comptroller Adewole.
In a related development, Honourable Minister of Finance, Mr Olusegun Aganga on Saturday 14 August 2010, was on a working visit to the SGS Scanner Site at the Idiroko Border in Ogun State, as part of his assessment of progress achieved in the implementation of contracts including the deployment of cargo scanners and ASYCUDA software by the four service providers engaged by the Federal Government under the DI scheme.
The Minister, who was received at the cargo scanner site by the company’s Managing Director Mr. Nigel Balchin, said the focus of the on-going modernisation of NCS is to enhance the capacity of the organisation to play its role as a trade facilitator and revenue collector. “Government is determined to achieve a 48hours clearance of goods landed at the port, as Nigeria Customs improve on its trade facilitation, the cost of production would go down and so also the price of goods. Our second focus is that we modernise Nigeria Customs Service to become an organisation we would all be proud of”, he stressed.
The Minister’s entourage to the site include senior officials of the Ministry, Customs Zonal Co-ordinator, Zone A, Assistant Comptroller General Saka Yinusa, Comptroller Umar of the Customs ASYCUDA Project as well as Area Controller of the Ogun Customs Command, Comptroller Sahabi Sadiq.
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