The National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders ,NAGAFF has described the attack of Comptroller General of Customs Service, Col. Hameed Ai(rtd) as baseless and uncalled for.
The National President of NAGAFF, Chief Increase Uche who stated this while interacting with Journalists in his office at the national Headquarters of the Association, Apapa, Lagos said those accusing him had no moral justification since what they were accusing him of, they were not able to correct when they had the privilege to do so.
“There shouldn’t be any attack in anyway because some of this people that are attacking and saying some of these things were in the system and they couldn’t do anything, so why are they raising issues now?
“Today, Senate Committee on Customs went to Port Harcourt to examine container that were suspecting carrying about 200 containers carrying ammunition
1st that the procedure, just in the same line with what Hope Uzodinma did when he was the chairman of the Committee. He started issuing DN. Police copied that they issued DN from Zone 2 to follow Custom procedure to issue DN 2. So these are the uncertainties that this system will now generate. I will advise that the customs officers whether retired or serving do not have moral justification to attack this man because you were there and still there, what have you done?
Chief Uche argued that if Customs,both serving and retired officers had done the right thing, there was no way government would have found any reason to bring in an outsider to head Customs
He made clear that presidency brought Hammed Ali to correct some anomalies which could not be corrected by those who where there and are still in the system.
“I remember that former CG of Customs was 2term President of World Customs organization for West and Central Africa, but still could not bring in Customs modernization system. We will help fight the service providers to retrieve all those scanning machines, TV provider, to return scanning aspect back to Customs in line with so called destination inspection. But deliberately they claim they are not working, but they were working before they took over but today , the debate now is, is it Customs that should provide scanner or Terminal operators ? That argument should not arise at all.
Chief Uche who is a member of CRFFN Governing board pointed out that attacking the CG was not the right thing, having failed to realise that he is not a career Customs officer and therefore not in the system, while calling on them to rally round him with their support.
He said emphatically that once his assignment in Customs are completed, he would definitely leave , as he cannot remain there permanently.
According to him , Reformation of Customs all these years, right from 90’s, when they migrated to ASCUDA 2.3 to 1993/94. We heard that before the end of that, before the thing moved before 2008, again barely 2,000 till we got to 3.0 2008/2009 during Diko period. Now we are talking about NICIS 1, NICIS 11, Where is the value addition? Just look how this system is. Now the entire clearance process, if not the task force set up, now the strike force. The least management tool system should have been the one sorting out where there is infringement. So let them go and put their house in order”.
It would be recalled that Senator Dr. Fadahunsi had called on the removal of the CG of Customs Service, Col. Hammed Ali (rtd) from office for alleged incompetency.
