Lack of transparency and integrity in personnel posting, arising from acts of nepotism and favouritism with a build-up of deliberate and wrongful delegation of responsibilities to unqualified staff in the Marine unit of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) may have led to the decay in operational efficiency of the Western Marine Customs which began on a gradual note, steadily leading to its final ruins, investigation conducted by The Tide has shown.
Whereas it is no longer news that the marine unit of the Nigeria Customs Service is nearly moribund and have failed to prop up the service of anti-smuggling operations within the nations’s sea/waterways, which was established among other role to checkmate mid stream import discharge and fight import smuggling through the sea. The immediate and remote causes of this unfortunate solution can now be traced to the sad politicisation of personnel posting and appointments into strategic positions, through a well coordinated external conspiracy that recruited certain elements within the top echelon of the service to sabotage the continued relevance of the Marine Customs.
A retired Customs Officer, CSC Aliyu A (rtd) who worked at Western marine up till 2004, said “ when you appoint a painter to the cabin or an engineer to the cabin, that voyage is doomed. I think that is what happened to the Marine Customs. Its posting may have been bastardised”.
With the above indication that the in corruption was already noticeable in the 2016, there is the unarguable fact of a festering of this rot even as the actions and inactions of present customs administration at the Western Marine and their immediate predecessors over the years also lend credence to facts of position fixing for unqualified personnel.
Our correspondent finding revealed that in 2000, the service had over 100 professional Marine Officers and men. However, no succession arrangement was in place to fill spaces occasioned by retirement, ill –health injury or death of existing marine officers pool.
It was also gathered that successive CACs of the Marine Customs danced to the gallery when confronted with the integrity of posting process and that of delegation of duties and responsibilities, believed to be done on the basis of parochial leaning either based on nepotism, ethnic, tribal or religious sentiment, including such as influenced by “ order from above”.
All of the above abuses and infiltrations, reliable insider sources informed The Tide is to promote political leaning and economic considerations.
The sad outcome of these unwarranted abuses had led to the untimely death of many personnel posted to the unit without the necessary training.
Just last month, March, a marine officer fired a colleague while trying to open fire on some Paji youths at the Marine Base, Badagry market who were on protest of Customs invasion of their land.
Attempts to speak with the Comptroller, Serkin Kebbi, the Western Marine area boss failed as he denied our correspondent audience.

NKpemenyie Mcdominic, Lagos