Panic has gripped some officers of the
Nigerian Customs Service over plans by the
management to de-rank about 4000 officers
from the ranks of assistant comptroller of
Customs to the lowest cadre, over alleged
indiscriminate allotment of ranks to
themselves.
Customs boss, Col Hamed Ali (rtd) has given
all officers and men of the Nigerian Customs
Service (NCS) 14 days ultimatum to declare
their assets.
According to Vanguard, some of the affected
officers have resorted to using their
godfathers among other desperate measures
to try and frustrate the de-ranking exercise.
Explaining the rationale behind the exercise,
chief superintendent of customs, Chris
Osunkwo, told Vanguard that the exercise
became necessary because some officers
have refused to play by rules and regulations
guiding customs promotions, transfer and
deployment.
Osunkwo who is also the spokesman of the
Tin-Can Island Customs Command said most
of the affected officers flout the rules on
promotions believing that their godfathers
can speak for them.
He said: “ 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.
“W e 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.”
In the same vein, the public relation officer
of the Apapa Area One Command of the
Customs Service, Emmanuel Ekpa said the
essence of the exercise was for officers to
put on their appropriate rank.
Ekpa explained that officers had refused to
wear their appropriate rank in the past.
He said: 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.” He
explained that in his Command, some officers
had carried out the directive, adding that the
Customs Area Comptroller, Mr. Willy Egbudin,
had vowed that the directive would be
implemented to the letter.
Meanwhile, following a 14 day deadline given
to customs officers to declare their assets,
many officers are now in a hurry to beat the
deadline.
Wale Adeniyi, the public relations officer of
the NCS said that officers were already
declaring their assets as directed by the
Comptroller- General of the NCS, Retired Col.
Hammed Alli last week. Source:
https://www.naij.com/706287-renewed-crisis-rocks-nigerian-customs-service.html

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