The Customs is getting it right by the day, kudos to Col. Hameed Ali (rtd) OFR. Though, he is not a properly trained Customs officer, but he has made a lot of difference taking into cognizance the changes he has injected into the latest redeployments across board.
Let’s take the anti-smuggling operations and the way forward for the Service; good judgments indeed –identifying the workaholics in the system is one difficult decision to steady the Service and point it ahead for productivity.
If we take our discourse in beats, then we must focus on the anti-smuggling initiatives and how Ali has breathed life into its operations. If you look at what can be seen as the general officers commanding the anti-smuggling operations, then the officers are incharge of the Federal Operations Units across the country, and this gives one an assurance that winning the war is in sight.
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Ali must be commended for bringing in some crack Deputy Comptrollers to police the zones’ anti-smuggling activities. They are some of the best cream of anti-smuggling officers. The coming of Kayode Rasheed Kolade will be a game changer sort of, as the east will once again have a taste of what proactive anti-smuggling is all about.
The South-East, South-South are majorly a lucrative trading route for all goods and patronized by all sorts of traders, devious and the honest ones alike. The unscrupulous ones are however, in the majority; and so, the policeman of the Service there, incidentally the boss of the FOU zone ‘C’ will have a big task in his hands to intercept prohibited goods, facilitate trade, arrest culprits and subject some to prosecution and of course, work hard through its legal department to get convictions.
Most of the imports to Nigeria end up in the East; they can come through Lagos, Onne or through the unapproved routes around the borders, a situation which makes the job of anti-smuggling officers in this area pretty difficult. With the use of intelligence; the coming of informants, the function of the anti-smuggling officers are made easier even though,very expensive, as huge money is spent on intelligence gathering.
Already, the Federal Operations in Zone A under Ejibunu has recorded an unprecedented feat in seizure profile, which can attract handsome rewards including automatic elevations of some of its workforce.
Other officers whose appointments are commendable include Comptroller Jalo now in charge of FOU ‘B’ kaduna and Deputy Compt Kayode Rasheed Kolade who now Superintends over the FOU ‘C’- an officer who has paid his dues judging from his very unique prosecution of the war against economic sabotage.
At his first day in office yesterday, Kolade, while being welcomed by officers and men of the Unit deposed that he would not sit down in the office to fight the war against smuggling. He stated that he will be heading to the jungle to flush out the activities of the smugglers in the zone.
‘I am a man of the jungle, so I will go all out to rout them out from the zone’. He assured the officers that ‘we will work together to improve on what we have met on ground’.