What Col. Hameed Ali should do

How they swung it should beat our imagination. Five senior officers of Nigeria’s Customs Service reigned their commission into the service saying as they did in the single letter they signed, that “we, the undersigned officers currently on the rank of Deputy Comptroller General of Customs met today October 29, 2015 and unanimously decided to […]

How they swung it should beat our imagination. Five senior officers of Nigeria’s Customs Service reigned their commission into the service saying as they did in the single letter they signed, that “we, the undersigned officers currently on the rank of Deputy Comptroller General of Customs met today October 29, 2015 and unanimously decided to voluntarily retire from the service of Nigeria Customs Service haven (sic) risen to the rank of Deputy Comptroller General.”
Clearly something was amiss. It has not been revealed what led to the “meeting”, who convened it, and what the agenda was. It must have been a critical issue and onlookers can only have subjected the matter to a lot of conjecture. In the social media, it was alluded that the new Comptroller General of Customs Col. Hameed Ali, reputed for being an iron fisted no nonsense person had directed that the five officers declared their assets to the Code of Conduct Tribunal, and that this prompted rumblings and upheavals whose culmination was the group voluntarily retirement. Certainly there is more than meets the eye in the goings on at the customs.
Was it permissible for high ranking officers who came into service at different times, along different paths to use one letter of “resignation” signed by all to leave the service? But was it permissible? Somehow it was.
The least the Customs Service Commission could have done was to return the letter advising that each officer wrote his own notice of retirement individually. It would normally have required a month’s notice or the salary in lieu of the notice. Even at that, it would have been relevant to resignations only. Retirement from service is subject to approval, Alas, few days later, and contrary to expectations that the Customs Service would give notice that the story was a hoax, a spokesman for the service gave confirmation and in fact went further to announce that twenty nine more officers had also “voluntarily retired” from the service. An abnormal purge was going on in the Customs Service in typical Buhari climate fashion – pillars falling to an invisible cyclone or tremor.
All the five officers who have reached the rank of Deputy Comptroller General of the Customs Service had the expectation that any one of them would be asked to replace Abdullahi Dikko Inde who had served his terms as Comptroller General. It can therefore be understood that there was more than deflated egos when an “outsider” Col. Hameed Ali was appointed to run the service. Career individuals have a tendency to find this type of broomstick landings by “aliens” to the system very unbearable. But just as the Nigerian Customs Service enjoys a notoriety for corruption and sleaze, Col. Hameed Ali has a reputation for being firm and principled, and it is believed that soon we will hear some version of what transpired.
There are notable problems in the Nigerian Customs Service, which naturally has its own share of the systemic Nigerian corruption, even as we must also recognize that of recent, the Service has improved in its drive to attain global standards. Yet it suffers from a not so enviable public image. No matter the situation, is there justification for the appointment of Col. Hameed Ali, a move which shattered the ambitions of career officers and in one fell swoop, caused the departure of highly groomed officers? We should not be afraid to raise this caution because the history of the Customs Service is replete with such aberration whose benefits to the service, we are unable to see. It seems each regime in the service just beats the past one in respective anomalies. This abnormality has applied to many institutions in the country where Government appointed heads from the outside, solving political problems but compounding professional issues, inimical to the rendering of good service to the nation.
Today, the officers and men cry out about our porous borders where facilities are poor. Yet we must observe that the borders seem porous only on the Nigerian side. Our neighbouring nations have a different experience. It is worrisome that we have an insurgency in the country through which terrorists succeeded in arming themselves with weapons, munitions and explosives which should have been apprehended at our entry points. This frustrates Government enough to trust no one in the hierarchy. But Government is the biggest offender in the compromise of service. The practice that grants indecent waivers to friends of the Government has caused the Customs Service to fold its arms and only watch the sacred cows move all types of merchandise into the country. It is believed that Boko Haram benefited immensely from this ill advised patronage of smugglers!
The problems bedeviling the Customs and Excise Service can be solved by Col. Hameed Ali only in a while. There needs to be established, a clear picture of the problems, within an equally clearly defined government policy aim. Col. Ali should redefine the vision in the spirit of the expected change, restructure, reorient and appoint capable new hands. In short, define the task, execute it, and leave a working system. Government should not be encouraged to frustrate the expectations of career officers as in time, this would kill zeal, commitment and fire up the very ill we are attempting to cure – corruption in the service.