The Chairman, Anti-Corruption Committee of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Chief Increase Uche has blamed the inherent abuse in the password usage on sabotage on the part of the officers and negligence on the part of the schedule officers who fail to withdraw such passwords from the allottee when the need arises.
Uche who made this position known in a letter he addressed to the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.) observed the fact that passwords were exclusive to Customs officers and also confidential to the officer so allocated such a control number.
He pointed out that it was a settled matter that passwords were attached to the Service numbers of Customs officers entitled to such secret information which he said was personal adding that it was also to their knowledge that the holder of every password had the right and prerogative of changing it every second in the course of operation.
“The CGC Sir, it is trite to note that the inherent abuse in the matter of password usage is purely an act of sabotage on the part of officers and negligence on the part of schedule officers not to withdraw such passwords from the allotees when the need arises. It is most unfortunate that despite the mandate of Mr. President that your administration should restructure Customs operations, we have not only continued to witness lapses in Customs operations, but to note that acts inimical to Customs optimal performance are persisting.
“Accordingly it shall be our advise that the ASYCUDA Project Managers and the modernization unit of the Service should work together to ensure that retired, transferred, suspended and even dead officers are relieved of their passwords as at when due. We did discover that officers who for one reason or the other are transferred, retired, suspended or even dead are left with their passwords unretrieved or blocked.
“It is alleged that these groups of officers usually sell their passwords to touts and hangers on at the Customs Processing Unit who usually commit these revenue crimes against the Service statutory duty. It is our strong belief that the CGC and his management team shall rise to the occasion to ensure administrative competence to the glory of international trade and freight forwarding practice in Nigeria.
“NAGAFF is not comfortable with the happenings in the Customs operations and administration thereto on matters of e-customs. It is on record that various arrests have been made and the records are there at the Enforcement Units. More worrisome is the fact that most of these boys who are engaged in revenue crimes and abuse of risk management tools of the Service are those touts and camp boys who are very familiar with strategic offices of the Service at the Area Commands”, he said.
The Committee Chairman also identified the in-house abuse occasioned by some of the one-star officers of the Service deployed at the CPC who not only use cloned passwords to close Customs units alerts of the valuation and query and amendment, but to equally use the old reference numbers of Standards Organisation of Nigeria in the Customs system to close their online request for suspected product as part of the problem.
He alleged that amount charged by these category of officer go as high as N150,000 to N250,000 per entry.
According to Uche,”It is also alleged that some of these passwords are sold as much as Five Million Naira to those touts and revenue criminals by the assigned Customs officers. It is also discovered that some of the passwords are rented out to the touts to make money for the officers who may have been transferred to a non-viable area of operation.
“It is our view that the CGC should give a standing order to the ASYCUDA Project Managers and in particular the ACG Modernization whose duty it is to block or open passwords to ensure that as soon as any officer with password is moved to other locations, retired, dead, suspended or interdicted, the password should be blocked forthwith.
“The way things are going, it appears that blocking of agency’s licences and importers TIN numbers due to password cloning whether wrongly or rightly has been a source of extortion. NAGAFF considers this as a gross negligence of duty on the part of staff officers of the Area Commands, who should have notified the ASYCUDA Project Managers and the Area Comptrollers as to the status of an officer in writing for due compliance to blockage of passwords of the affected officers.
“Let it be on record that it has been in the public domain that the ASYCUDA Project Manager and the CAC of TCIP have been having a running battle with officers who either as a result of incompetence on the computer expose their passwords to aides and/or it is deliberate for monetary gains”.
He therefore recalled that this matter has been settled by the Dikko-led administration which he said insisted that the owner of the cloned password should be held responsible for the lapses and negligence of duty thereto arguing that it should be the standard upon which the issue of password abuse hinges.
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