By Ifeyinwa Obi

THE Nigeria Customs Service,(NCS), said it has trained about 5, 000 of its officers on different aspects of Destination Inspection of cargo clearance.

Comptroller General of the Service, Alhaji Dikko Abdullahi told Customs Watch  that the service had surpassed the designated number of officers that were expected to be trained.

Abdullahi said the service contracted providers to train 300 of its officers in all segments of cargo clearance, adding that the trainers had given the service a good score card on the training of its officers.

“We have trained not less than 5, 000 officers, at different levels, on our own apart from those the service providers provided. What they tell us is that they are not obliged to train more than 300 or 350, that is based on their terms of contract. We discovered that this would be highly inadequate, so on our own we have trained more. But we do know that the 300 is highly inadequate for the kind of job we are going to do.  So, we have gone beyond the training provided by the service providers to do another training ourselves.”

Customs boss, Dikko

He added: “As part of our take-over plans, we have developed our professional and sustainable scanner training capability, including the professional development of expert trainers. NCS has undertaken an enormous development of training courses for all officers involved in scanning, with specific training for each functional role. NCS has also undertaken the selection and delivery of these courses to over 300 NCS officers. This is reinforced by a programme of coaching by experts who have years of experience in operating scanners for customs around the world.

“NCS has selected 20 officers to act as Radiation Protection Supervisors at each site. These officers report to the NCS Radiation Safety Officer, who holds a Master;s degree in Physics and has more than seven years’ experience with x-ray scanners. All of these officers are trained to international standards and qualified  from a United Kingdom Radiation Safety company. They will be further trained and assessed by an NNRA approved establishment. All of these activities have been instigated and carried out by NCS as a response to the failure of the service providers to carry out a credible transfer activity”.

In a statement signed by the Public Relations Officer (PRO), Customs Headquarters, Abuja, Wale Adeniyi, a deputy comptroller, Abdullahi said there was no truth in the statements in some quarters that NCS was ready to take over DI by next month.

According to him, some of the service providers, particularly GlobalScan have the worst maintained and operated equipment. He said it was not only amusing but also insulting to be criticised for lack of capacity at the end of a seven year contract which had, as its goal, the establishment of an NCS scanning capacity.

Describing it as diversionary tactics from real facts, the Comptroller of Customs said the failed attempt by GlobalScan Managing Director, Mr. Fred Udechukwu, to change the narrative of DI, hiding behind the façade of capacity gap building, should be put in proper perspective.

“Most Nigerians still find it very difficult and disheartening to correlate the amount of money thrown at the service providers, particularly Globalscan, in return for the poor infrastructure, operation, and capacity building and transfer activity delivered so far. The seven years of service paid for by the Federal Government in no way represents value for money. Udechukwu’s position that NCS has insufficient capacity to take over is a clear self- indictment by Globalscan.

“We will not allow the criticisms of Udechukwu and his likes to deter us from building our capacity to perform our statutory responsibility. We are already on a steady course, that is self- sustaining and inward looking. Our salvation ultimately lies not in the hands of self-styled desperate arm-chair experts”, he added.