Customs Moves To Block Revenue Leakages

Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NSC), Alhaji Abdullahi Dikko, says the ongoing revolution in the service is geared towards blocking leakages, boosting revenue targets and laundering the image of the service.

Dikko said this in Abuja  recently while fielding questions at a forum .

He said that the revolution in the service included training and retraining of officers and men as well as a review of its operational strategies and principles in line with the Act establishing the service.

The comptroller-general attributed achievements of the NCS especially in meeting its revenue targets to the ongoing reforms.

He explained that as part of the initiative, more than 12,000 customs officers of different cadres had been trained at home and abroad on trends in the sector since he assumed office in 2009.

“So actually we found ourselves in a situation whereby the officers were really abandoned, so we had to go back to the drawing board and intensify the training and retraining of officers on this aspect; that is the classification, evaluation and assessment, actually that is the greater part of revenue leakages.

“Towards the end of 2011, we trained almost 12,889 out of our 17,000 workforce so you can see that majority of the officers have gone on training.

“So actually that was what gave birth to the improvement in revenue collection and the attitudinal change of the officers.’’

Dikko told newsmen that revenue accruable to government had been lost in the past due to leakages occasioned by inefficiency in the system and low morale of officers and men of the service.

He acknowledged that officers were not adequately motivated prior to his assumption of office in 2009 and added that the new agenda was aimed at enhancing a better motivated workforce that would help the service to achieve its objectives.

He said that a greater part of his six-point agenda had been addressed and that the management was in the process of reviewing the agenda for greater efficiency and performance.

Dikko, who said he was proud of presiding over a service of well-motivated officers, told newsmen that the service was destined for better service delivery for the development of the country.

On the capacity of the service to effectively police the country’s borders, Dikko said that NCS did not have the personnel to police all the borders to fully check activities of smugglers.

On meeting the training needs of officers within the country, Dikko said that its newly upgraded college for middle and high level officers was designed to give its officers relevant training in areas of ICT and other aspects of the service responsibilities.

He said that the college’s curriculum was designed to offer training in the direction of the World Customs Organisation and that the college was affiliated to a university in Europe.

The comptroller-general who acknowledged the existence of fraudulent officers in the system, said that the NCS was prepared to purge itself of negative influence in its bid to revolutionise the service.

He told newsmen  that the attitude and orientation was gradually changed towards greater performance and transparency in its operations at the ports and the borders.

Dikko assured that the service was better positioned to offer same services that could be found in other parts of the world.