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Not too long ago, the Comptroller-General (CG) of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Col. Hameed Ali (retd), declared that there was no going back on the closure of Nigeria’s porous borders.
When President Muhammadu Buhari appointed Col. Ali (retd) the CG of the NCS, eyebrows were raised as to the unprecedented choice of a former soldier, a non-Customs career ex-military officer, to head the critical institution. Predictable questions were asked as regards his pedigree, competency and capacity to navigate the hitherto murky terrains of an agency largely reputed for cancerous corruption that defied governmental and institutional redemption over the years.
Nobody can declare today that the historical ogre of corruption debility has been decimated in the Customs, but it is incontrovertible and unassailable that the organisational disease has been clinically managed to a healthful and optimal minima ever in the history of the agency under the astute and occasionally controversial-–but therapeutic— leadership of Col. Ali.
Issuing from the above, the government of Dr. Goodluck Jonathan may have left national sour grapes, but nobody can dismiss the irrefutable point that he had a quintessential ministerial team and seasoned heads of agencies and departments. In fact, on a reflective note, there is no basis for any comparison between the present and erstwhile (2011-2015) ministers and allied office holders.
Since the curious appointment of Col. Ali as the CG of the NCS, I have been monitoring his activities in multifarious ways, particularly dispassionate interactive sessions with a few key stakeholders in Customs operations, maritime editors and a senior Customs friend of mine (name withheld for obvious reasons). Of course, I equally synthesised most publications concerning the sub-sector. To avoid subjectivity, I deliberately never interfaced in any way with the agency officially or unofficially.
Human capital in any organisational set-up matters most because the employ constitutes the first public of the institution. This, perhaps, explains why on assumption of office, Col. Ali promoted more than 300 officers and men in an on-going exercise—an epochal development that is unprecedented in the history of the establishment.
The next port of call for the CG was the sanitisation of the service through the cleansing of the Augean stables. He may not have exterminated corruption from the system, but he has reduced the threshold significantly in a manner never recorded in the annals of the institution. Now, there is so much transparency and almost zero-tolerance for the tragedy that gives the NCS the worst tag. I understand that this was a presidential mandate and possibly one of the pre-conditions and assurances that guaranteed his appointment. In accomplishing the foregoing directive, Col. Ali began redeployment of officers and men of the agency most of who had become lords unto themselves and so enriched themselves that they almost became uncontrollable on account of the volume of their ill-gotten wealth. The movement does not ensure good behaviour, but it sends a signal that everyone is under close watch—this consciousness will, at least, minimize—not stop—the tendency to be corrupt.
Successive governments had toyed with the idea of ban on rice importation. Nothing much was achieved until the advent of Col Ali. Today, it can safely be said that the enforcement of the ban has drastically reduced the frequency of foreign rice importation so much that vistas and opportunities have been opened for some states like Anambra and Kebbi, which have taken the opportunity of the ban to grow their own local variety that is even better than foreign rice in terms of employment windows, nutritional quality, pricing and economic regeneration for farmers, states and the country. The bags of foreign rice still dominant in the market are those smuggled in by unpatriotic businessmen in collusion with the remaining few bad eggs in the Customs. This dimension is almost irredeemable because of the porous nature of our shut borders manned by rotten (bad) eggs in the NCS.
When the NCS introduced vehicle duty payment, the Nigeria Labour Congress, the House of Representatives and others with vested interest in the matter raised the alarm over what they considered callous, unrealistic and unpopular! Col. Ali stuck to his guns because some selfish lawmakers and a few other Nigerians used the old order to commit all manner of economic and financial atrocities to the detriment of the country in complicity with erring Customs personnel. Most other helmsmen would have succumbed to such jaundiced public outcry. I take off my hat to Col. Ali for re-engineering the capacity of his officers and men, modernisation of operational channels, employment of technology to diminish multiple certifications, endless verification, voluminously burdensome documentation generally, giving the Customs workforce a novel lease of life through inspirational tendencies and enthronement of personnel welfare packages that espouse incentives which never existed. Of course, Col. Ali’s overall near-extirpation of corruption in the system continues to draw accolades even from his detractors and those who futilely disagree with him interminably amid juvenility.
Another novelty of Col. Ali is the well-publicised online auctioning of seized items like vehicles, food consumables and fabrics. The highest bidder gets the product from any part of the country amid transparency without insider mediation, as much as possible. It is a system open to everyone for participation and scrutiny. The perishable items are sent to the IDPs.
For the above and other copious reasons unmentioned here because of space constraint, I declare, with all sense of responsibility and candour, that Col. Ali is one of the best appointments that President Buhari made. I stand challenged and welcome constructive reactions, doubtfully if any!
On Senate’s uniform clownishness—instead of focusing on Col. Ali’s diligence, holistic performance and near-extermination of endemic corruption in the Customs—I leave the pigeon-holed and archival senatorial theatricals for another day.
Having distinguished himself in the NCS, President Buhari should consider giving Col. Ali, a rare species, a much-more critical and higher responsibility whenever he reshuffles his cabinet.
