The Comptroller-General, Nigeria Customs Service, Hameed Alli approved the unbundling of some commands from the beginning of his administration and set out the roadmap for repositioning the service through reforms, restructuring and increased revenue generation.
The National Public Relations Officer of the service, Deputy Comptroller Timi Bomodi who said this in an interview in Abuja, explained that, as part of restructuring, the comptroller-general specifically unbundled some commands to make it easier to focus on particular goals.
Bomodi said, for instance in Port Harcourt, an oil and gas free trade command was created out of a command, which hitherto managed normal goods and free trade goods together.
According to him, it is changes like this that have made the system more robust, effective and easier for commands to achieve their goals.
“The reforms have to do basically with a moral ethical reawakening of officers and creating platform for them to be able to do the right thing.
“In view of this, he set up Training and Doctrine Command which is pivotal in the training and reorientation of officers.
“It has helped officers to look at their performance in terms of integrity because a lot of what we do as Customs officers has to do with personal integrity.
“He introduced certain elements that prior to this time was not there.
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“For instance, we have the Customs Police, which was established to ensure that officers abide by the rules as spelt out in their conduct and they have been very effective,” he said.
The Customs spokesperson also said the leap in revenue generation was a major achievement that had kept the service in the limelight.
He said hitting the trillion Naira mark in 2017 was a major breakthrough, adding that since then the service had continued to record substantially high revenue generation.
Bomodi said the service had been able to keep the tempo in spite of recent global challenges like the COVID-19 Pandemic and inflation due to introduction of certain elements enabled by technology.
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