Col. Hameed Ali’s sack as customs Comptroller General while he was attending the World Customs Organisation’s Conference in Brussels will be one difficult memory that he will nurse for long.
A man who proved very stubborn within more than seven years tenure, ruling with maximum power and unquestionable impunity couldn’t have been discharged from such exalted office in a better way.
He had right from day one looked down on the service when he refused to adorn the customs uniform. To him, as a former military officer, he could not see himself ‘lower his stature’
His dilemma over his continued grip in office started wavering few weeks ago, when after procuring the tickets for the Brussels trip, he was at a crossroads over doing the trip or not.
Eventually, he was egged on and convinced by his equally powerful- self hired Principal Staff Officer (PSO) , Brigadier General Buhari who abandoned his job at the Army to work for Col. Ali (rtd) as PSO at the customs- having believed that the service is a cash cow.
The duo eventually departed for Brussels with the Deputy Comptroller General Bashir Adewale Adeniyi.
It was in the middle of the conference yesterday that Col. Hameed Ali and his Principal staff officer- Brigadier General Buhari were served the ‘ Breakfast’ they wouldn’t love to eat, with the President sending them a shocker across the Atlantic.
Col. Ali and General Buhari who are taking the next available flight, cutting their meeting short, will arrive Abuja any moment from now to pack out any of their personal belongings out of the Customs House before the substantive Comptroller General Adeniyi returns on Saturday when the WCO conference would have ended.
Ali’s stint at the Customs House is a huge lesson that nothing lasts for ever.
The service has always yearned for a proper officer and a leadership from within but political jobbers and selfish considerations have not enabled to see it through.
Ali’s ascension to the service is believed by many as the worst thing to happen to the service as stakeholders saw him as an outsider coming to learn on the job.
Others argued also that deployments to juicy commands were not justiceable as only officers of his extraction were so favoured while others from other zones were left out of the equation.
Perhaps, the only positive thing by Ali during his time was the promotion of officers as at when due, notwithstanding allegations of promotion scandals and such elevations going to the highest bidders.
His tenure will no doubt, remain a big study when the history of the more than one hundred years service is being written.
At the moment, it is a big relief to the Service’s personnel as they have expressed joy to work with one of their own.
The new Comptroller General have a duty to right all the wrongs inflicted on the psyche of officers who have stagnated on a rank or through deployments.
With his rich resume, there is high expectation that the service will recover what the locust have made nonsense of in the last eight years.