This year may have started on a gloomy note for 30 Comptrollers of Customs and their dependants as the Customs Board has confirmed their retirement from service.

  According to competent sources at Customs headquarters, Abuja, the Federal Civil Service Commission has published names of 32 Comptrollers of Customs alongside 51 directors from various Federal Ministries.

  Details of the lists sighted by our correspondent revealed that the federal civil service  commission cited redundancy and stagnation in one rank for ten years and above as the reason why the officers must quit the service.

  Ordinarily, the public service rule prescribes three years as the maturity period for officers to earn their promotion to the next grade level, between GL 08 and GL 14, while the maturity period to move between GL 14 and GL 17 is four years, our source revealed.

  “If following simple logic, therefore, an officer entering the civil service with a first degree would require a  minimum of 27years  to attain the post of a director, “he said.

  This invocation of the civil service rules, according to our source, was all that is needed to send these comptrollers back to their homes.

  However, reports indicate that two comptrollers (names withheld) who hitherto fell among the retirees have been promoted to Assistant Comptrollers – General of Customs leaving 30 others, unlike 2004, were 75 comptrollers were sacked in what is today known as the Customs coup of 2004.

  Some senior Customs officers who do not want their names in print perceive this as an ethnic cleansing.  According to them, the premature sack of comptrollers is a  plot to do away with a crop  of officers who are seen as power mongers and aggrieved due to the maltreatment the service has meted to  them.

  An assistant comptroller who led the array of critics against the sack said, “it is a deliberate plot by the present Comptroller – General of Customs to sack because he is afraid of these officers some of whom have attained the rank of comptroller while he (Dikko) was still a Chief Superintendent of Customs (CSC).

  While some of the critics accused the president of demystifying the  strength of the North in the scheme of allocation of officers in the major parastatals, one of the  affected retirees told our correspondent on phone that the  present C.G., Alhaji Dikko plotted the coup to retire them in order to pave way for young and dynamic officers whom he will be able to control and manage without confrontation and insubordination having learned from the previous administration.

  The Tide finding can authoritatively reveal that a look  at the date of first appointment of the affected comptrollers shows that they joined the service in 1982 while the list of ages of the affected officers stand  at 49,50,52 as provided by records sighted by our correspondent.

  According to an inside source, there is a serious trouble brewing in the service due to this sack saga, adding that before the final ratification by the Customs board, the said officers had been lobbying to be posted to juicy commands to make something before their retirement but for those who don’t have political fathers or emirs and obas, they were left either in redundancy at the Customs headquarters or posted to unviable commands.

  But on the sack of the 30 comptrollers, a maritime analysts Chief Chibuzor Ebere, noted that changes are usually meant for good, but when the changes come as a result of what could be avoided in the name of crisis, then the reason for the change is not genuine.

  “It becomes more painful when these fellows are still very young (in their 50s) and below, very healthy and active. It means that over time you lose very useful materials in the name of changes,” Chief Ebere said.

  He further remarked that what maritime experts want is modernization for efficiency, reinforcing the manpower by giving them more training to cope with the global changes in the maritime industry and not throwing the effective manpower.

  A source confided in our correspondent that the 30 affected and aggrieved comptrollers may join the 75 comptrollers retired in 2004 and over15 ACGs and DCGs to challenge their premature sack in a law court and shore up support for their determination for re-instatement.