BY IFEYINWA OBI

LAGOS — The Nigerian Customs Service has accused the ousted service providers of leaving behind old-fashioned and obsolete scanners at the nation’s seaport, airports and border posts.

Comptroller-General of customs, Alhaji Abdullai Dikko, who made the allegation, yesterday, in Lagos, disclosed that the service providers only provided 21 scanners during their extended stay of eight years in Nigeria.

Dikko, who spoke at the Federal Operations Unit, FOU, of the Customs, Ikeja, Lagos, lamented that most of these scanners were obsolete that could not drive the vision of Customs.

He claimed that some of the old-fashioned scanners provided at Port-Harcourt, Warri and Borno were not working.
Dikko, who declared that Customs had put enough preparation to ensure the success of the destination inspection scheme, said the DI contractors failed to supply scanners at Ilorin Airport.

He, however, promised that the management of the service had evolved a five- year strategic plan to provide 50 scanners.

Dikko, who had been in Lagos for the past one week on the sensitisation of port users and business community over Pre-arrival Assessment Report, PAAR, said about 350 officers had been trained to power the new system while another 300 were trained to man the scanners.

He also disclosed that 15 officers had been trained in Canada on forensic activities to track down hackers of Customs’ website and the newly created Nigeria trade portal which drives the PAAR. Sixteen people have so far been arrested in connection with cloning the Customs’ website.

It will be recalled that the Customs Service this week took over the destination inspection scheme from the service provider who were contracted in 2006 to train Customs officers on the use of scanners and other risk management procedure.