From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Arewa Youth Consultative Forum (AYCF) has waded into alleged irregularity in staff promotion criteria of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS).
AYCF alleged that the plan in the offing is to exclusively promote personnel who joined the service between 2009 and 2015 at the detriment of personnel who had put in 30 years of service.
A statement by the National President of AYCF, Alhaji Yerima Shettima said, “It has come to our notice, as a group, that the management of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) is set to pursue a policy of exclusion in the promotion of its personnel, based on an illegitimate criteria.
“We gathered that the plan in the offing is to exclusively promote personnel who joined the service between the year 2009 and 2015. This is bad enough because there are personnel of the service who have been for the past 30 years.
“The action of the service is now predicated on the pedestrian argument that there has been no fresh recruitment into the service between 1992 and 1994, up until 2009 when the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan lifted the embargo.
“Based on the authentic background information available to AYCF, we wish to declare as follows:
“That the gap created by the embargo is not the fault of the officers who gave all of their mental and physical energy in the service of this nation for over three decades.
“We find it totally unacceptable, any policy that will allow promotion of Customs Service personnel through the backdoor.
“We expect that the philosophy of respect for procedure, which President Muhammadu Buhari has been known for should be allowed to prevail in the circumstance
“We are disturbed that the Nigeria Customs Service could even contemplate this selective and therefore unprofessional method of promoting its personnel without recourse to established procedure.
“We find it quite disappointing that the NCS would pursue this unacceptable method, apparently without recourse to the office of the Minister of Finance and National Planning or even the advice of either the office of Head of Service of the Federation or that of Secretary to the Government of the Federation.
“We call on the National Assembly to also step in, to ensure that this controversial and dangerously-selective policy does not see the light of the day. Meanwhile, in view of the importance of NCS to national security, we think the DSS too needs to be part of the process that will promote respect for the rule of law in rewarding personnel of the service in general and on the philosophy of first-among-equals”.