The founder, National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF), Dr. Boniface Aniebonam over the weekend thumbs down on the performance of the Comptroller-General of Customs, Col. Hameed Ali (rtd.) who he said had not delivered on any of the mandates given to him by President Muhammadu Buhari on assumption of duty as the customs helmsman.
It will be recalled that on assumption of duty as the Comptroller-General of Customs, Ali disclosed that he was sent to the Service to reform, restructure and enhance the revenue due to the federal government.
But speaking at an event to unveil a radio programme floated by NAGAFF and codenamed NAGAFF Cargo Watch in Lagos Friday, Dr. Aniebonam opined that as far as the association was concerned, they were yet to see any meaningful progress made in any of the above named mandates by the CGC.
He maintained that nearly two years in office, a lot of their expectations as it affect customs operations were yet to be met by Ali adding that he cannot be said to have done well as far as the three mandates were concerned.
According to him,” We have a mandate from Mr. President through the Nigeria Customs Service to reform, restructure and enhance revenue due to the government, as far as we are concerned and then in our own position, the goodness of the Nigeria Customs service translates to us in terms of productivity. But it is very obvious now that some of the things we thought would have happened by now are yet to come, so I don’t know whether we are reforming, restructuring or enhancing revenue. A lot of things are not really going well as we expected”.
He further added that for all the mandates to be achieved, the welfare of the officers and men of the Service needed to be improved upon as fast as possible so that they could be held responsible for their actions.
“For me now if you look at the salary structure of the customs and its equivalents, then you will see that something is wrong somewhere because it seems that it is not enough for them to carry on their responsibilities”, he said.
While noting that the Customs boss hinted that power resides with the Customs Area Controllers (CACs) at the various customs commands, he recalled that officers were still being posted from the Customs Headquarters at Abuja even as he wondered how the CACs could take charge of the officers he did not deploy to his area of command.
“The Comptroller-General of Customs as it were has told us so many things, one of which is that the Controllers of Customs are in-charge of their areas but we have seen now that some of these officers are posted directly from Abuja. So how can we confirm that what he is saying is what he is doing? Where we look at the issues of discipline and compliance, we need to look at some of these issues”, he added.
Send your news, press releases/articles as well as your adverts to info@primetimereporters.com. Also, follow us on Twitter @reportersinfo and on Facebook on facebook.com/primetimereporters or call the editor on 07030661526, 08053908817.
