Over 4,000 Customs Officers to be demoted in nationwide sweep

Customs appoints 6 Deputy Comptrollers-General, 8 Assistant Comptrollers-General | YNaija.com

The management of the Nigerian Customs Service, NCS has made known its decision to clampdown on officers from the ranks of Assistant Comptroller of Customs to the lowest cadre, over their alleged indiscriminate allotment of ranks to themselves.

The decision of the management has thrown the NCS into crisis as affected officers, it was gathered, have started making moves to foil the exercise which include reaching out to godfathers and other politicking devices.

According to Vanguard Newspaper, Chris Osunkwo, a Chief Superintendent of Customs and spokesperson of the Tin-Can Island Customs Command, said the indiscipline of some officers who have refused to play by rules and regulations guiding Customs promotions, transfer and deployment in the NCS informed the decision of the management.

Osunkwo further stated that because some officers believed they have godfathers who can speak for them, they abused the due process of the service.

He revealed that the same decision to crackdown on these officers was made during the tenure of Abdullahi Dikko but it was stopped from being effected.

“Even during Oga Dikko’s time as Comptroller – General, this same directive was released but nobody cared to enforce it and I don’t know why they refused to obey but now the new management is taking steps, to enforce the directive.”

He also revealed the three cadres in the NCS, which are Customs Assistant Cadre, Inspectorate Cadre and Superintendent Cadre while stating that certain conditions must be met before officers are allowed to migrate through these ranks which some officers have blatantly ignored because of their godfathers.

His words: “People ab initio refused to abide by the rules and regulations that guide our appointments, promotions and deployments.

“Officers know that these things have been spelt out; it is just that a lot of them believe that they have godfathers here and there, that is why they sometimes flout some of these directives. If you are not a graduate or Higher National Diploma holder, and you join the Customs, you are not a commissioned officer yet until you do what we call lateral conversion.

“We have three cadre points of entry into the Nigeria Customs Service and they are the Customs Assistant Cadre, the Inspectorate Cadre and Superintendent cadre. If you want to migrate from one cadre to another cadre, there are conditions in the scheme of service which should qualify you to migrate and not for you to ascribe rank to yourself.

‘’If you have any added qualification to entry qualification, come forward and management will verify if you got approval to embark on your educational pursuit. If this is confirmed, you are automatically up graded to the cadre of your wish. But what obtains among some officers is that they get additional qualification most times without approval and before you know it, they are wearing ranks they are not entitled to wear. Whether these additional qualifications are fake or not, nobody cares to find out.”

Similarly, the Public Relation Officer of the Apapa Area One Command of the Customs Service, Emmanuel Ekpa told Saturday Vanguard that the Comptroller General, Col. Hameed Ali (retd) is putting work into a directive for all officers to carry their appropriate rank.

Ekpa revealed that even though the last Comptroller-General of Customs, Dikko Abdullahi tried to address the issue several officers still failed to wear their appropriate rank.

“The truth is that what has happened is not new and the Comptroller-General of Customs is not doing anything contrary to the rules and regulations of the service. What he did was that he was given directive on officers that are not putting on their appropriate rank. How do you know the appropriate rank? Bring your letter of promotion; your letter of promotion will determine what your rank is.

“If there is any discrepancy in your last two letters of promotion, the directive will take care of it. If your last two promotions do not read the rank you are putting on, you are asked to put in your appropriate rank. The key word is ‘appropriate.’ Since the new Comptroller General came, he has not done any promotion.

“The former Comptroller General did the last promotion and officers were promoted appropriately but the problem as you have rightly said is the confusion concerning what to put on and what not to put on, depending on the cadre through which an officer entered the Customs.

“I want to let you know that before the last Comptroller General of Customs left, the issue of appropriate ranking was adequately addressed and corrected but officers did not adhere to that directive. It was based on that, that the new Comptroller General now asked officers to put on the appropriate rank.”

About 4000 officers may be de-ranked nationwide in the sweep.

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