By Godwin Oritse
THE management of the Nigeria Customs Service NCS has entered into a strategic partnership with an Australian University with a view to providing continuous training for officers and men of the service.

The training is part of the strategic plan by the current administration to update and upgrade its personnel in line with its operations in the facilitation of trade.

Speaking to newsmen in Abuja recently, NCS’s Comptroller-General Alhaji Abdulahi Dikko said that well-trained personnel will naturally bring about increased revenue generation.

The little progress made in the area of capacity building has resulted in the increased suppression of smuggling activities and more seizures.

He stated that in the 120-year history of the Nigeria Customs Service, its personnel has never been so  enhanced adding that this has led to increased revenue generation to anti -smuggling, modernization and upgrading of working tools and equipment to personnel welfare.

According to the Customs boss, the training programme is part of the  six-point agenda to reposition the service.

He also stated that he was   determined to change the course of NCS for the better with a clear understanding that a well trained, remunerated and motivated personnel is key to maximizing the potentials of the service.

It would be recalled that for the first time in many years, about 5,000 young Nigerians were recruited into the service to beef up the numerical strength of the organisation.

Maritime analysts are of the opinion that the morale of the personnel have been boosted following the recently increased remunerations, welfare packages and enhanced service conditions.

“For the first time too, we are seeing officers and men with superior fire power to meet the increasing sophistication of desperate dare devil smugglers.

“The fleet of operational and general logistic support vehicles for enforcement units has also increased in the present dispensation and this has  resulted in increased in volume of seizures by the  Federal Operations Units (FOU).

“For the first time in the history of the service, it succeeded in attracting a supplementary budget of N14 billion from the Federal Government to enhance productivity.

“Again, the yuletide season of 2010 will go down in the memory of smugglers and perpetrators of similar anti-economic vices as a period of great losses as the anti-smuggling unit of the Customs clamped down on them with great successes as billions of naira worth of smuggled goods were seized.

“The Comptroller General assured that the staff College under construction in Gwagwalada will be equipped with the best of modern teaching aids so that it can cater for the knowledge acquisition needs of middle and senior level managers of the service. the analysts added.

The college, according to Dikko  is expected to become a regional training center of customs personnel for the West and Central African Sub-region when completed.

As at the time of filing this report, about 3,100 senior and 2,500 junior staff of the various departments of the Customs Service have received training in various courses and workshops, locally and internationally.