The
Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) has said that the porous and extensive border
area requiring security coverage was the reason for the spate of smuggling and
arms proliferation in the country.
The NCS,
however, said that the procurement of three mobile scanners for it by the
Ministry of Finance would further enhance its surveillance and security at the
country’s borders.
Col.
Hameed Ali, retired, the Comptroller General, NCS, said this at the
presentation of the service’s 2021 budget before the House Committee on Customs
Service on Thursday in Abuja.
The News
Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that the NCS proposed a budget of N242.45
billion for the 2021 fiscal year.
Ali said
that there was no way the NCS, which has a little over 15,000 officers, would
be able to police the nation’s boarders effectively.
The CGC
said that it was worrisome that smuggling often happened in border communities
where most of the residents had no feel of governance and therefore bare no
allegiance to the Nigerian government.
He said
that those residents would rather bare their allegiance to smugglers because of
lack of government presence in the border communities, stressing that the NCS
would continue to do its best to police the nation’s borders.
“I feel
their pain, in some cases they have to cross the border to go to school and
also fetch water because there is no government presence,” the CGC said.
He said
that the war against smugglers should not be left to the NCS alone, adding that
other security agencies should be involved in the fight against smuggling.
Ali also
disclosed that the three scanners purchased would be deployed to Apapa, Tin can
Island and Port Harcourt, adding that the scanner would be use to improve its
work.
On
recruitment into the NCS, the CGC said that the service had not recruited in
the past 17 years, adding that recruitment into the service was the prerogative
of the President.
He said
that the NCS needed to recruit officers, adding that there was a gap in terms
of officers currently in the service.
“There
will come a time that there will be no junior officers again in NCS; we need
more officers and this is why we embarked on the recruitment of 3200 officers
for which we have so far spent N40 million,” he said.
Rep Leke
Abejide, the Chairman of the committee, said that the committee was interested
in the 2020 NCS budget performance as it was one of the major agencies of
revenue generation in the country.
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