… Sets to bare his teeth
The Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Adewale Adeniyi, number one customs officer with calm, quiet and gentle smiles’ disposition recently bares his teeth when he charges his officers and men to brace up to the task ahead and not to misconstrued his gentle mien and friendly disposition for weakness.
CG of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi MFR
Adewale further told them that it is for their own good to be up and doing as their duty entails as they should be ready at any given time to account for their actions or inactions.
This strong message by the CGC according to reports is however not only directed to officers and men of the NCS, but as well to bonded terminal operators, terminal operators, importers and their agents, as he warned that it was not going to be business as usual under his leadership.
Adeniyi, who made this disclosure recently while speaking on the need to be security conscious, remain vigilant and abide by the tenets of their oath they swore not to be compromised in the course of their duties, when he was on a visit to the Apapa command of the service on Thursday, July 4th, 2023.
This talk tough by the CGC is against the backdrop of the recent avalanche of seizures of arms and ammunition in space of one month at Tin Can, Onne ports and most recently at the Lagos Airport (MMA) which has become a source of concern to the management of the service.
In serious terms, he warned that his benign look should not be misconstrued as a weakness as he was going to trace and track down all merchants of death and their collaborators who were bringing in arms and ammunition and other illicit items into the country.
In a resonating voice that was devoid of his trademark smiles and friendly banters, Adeniyi kept his men and officers transfixed enchanted as he chastised them on the need to be professionally upright in their duties and be ready to be accountable for their actions.
“Since the beginning of this year, I am sure you must have known or heard about a customs officer or his family that was kidnapped.
“I am sure you must have heard or known a colleague or a family member of a customs officer that has been a victim of a terrorist attack, either in the North East, in the North West, or in the South”.
“So customs officers are not isolated from what is happening in the rest of the country.
“I just wanted to use those instances to draw your attention to the fact that we live in a very, very dire situation in the country”
“Unfortunately, the responsibility of making it better lies in the hands of all of us. The responsibility of correcting this anomaly lies in our action or inaction.
“You are following the developments. What happened on Wednesday at Lagos Airport).
“At the airport, with the seizure of arms and military accouterments, before last week, before the one of yesterday, there was a big incident that happened in Onne”. And they are going through our hands.
“Declarations that are made by these people who go through our desk. They are inside our system”,
“What it means is that we have an onerous response. And we also have an onerous responsibility to address the national security emergency that we face in Nigeria”.
“What the trend has shown is that they are desperate, they have a network of support, they have people who conspired with them, some of them within the service, some of them outside the service.
“And we have a responsibility not to allow them to bring those death niche merchandise into Nigeria. Of course, you know that they come in different forms.
“It’s either that they are wrongly declared, or they come to compromise our process and procedure.
“And the most important one is the fact that goods that are supposed to be scanned, or those that are supposed to undergo a physical examination, are not subjected to it.
“So, these goods are released, they are not scanned, or they are never inspected. That’s one way of doing it.
“The other one is when we say that they are going on Transire to 100 terminals, and they never get there.
“That customs officer, who would be the victim of kidnapping, who would be the victim of terrorist attack, that family that might be facing this kind of problem, might be yours or mine if we decide to abuse the oath of office that we swore to uphold. So, it’s all up to you”, Adeniyi declared.
He thereafter warned officers of the consequences of their actions and inaction which he said could be dire.
“But the bad news for all of you is that we work with a system that has track and trace.
“What each and all of you do with our system can be tracked. It can be traced. We can attribute them to you in the next seven years or beyond.
“What you do not do can also be attributed to you. So, either way, we can be located and we can be called upon to account for our actions or inaction.
“So, I therefore urge you to lead to your responsibility. This nation is ours. Revenue is important. Trade facilitation is important. We are getting it right on those ends”
“We must not fail on our mandate of national security. There are containers of fake drugs that are waiting to come out of the port as I speak.
“There are containers of arms and ammunition that are there. There are containers of frozen poultry products under import prohibition that are there as we are speaking”, he said.
“And we have all the risk indicators. To show them to us. We have everything it takes to trace the importers, to do system audits on our own, and put question marks on some of them”
“So, the responsibility lies with all of us to live up to the oath of service, the oath of allegiance to the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
He further stated that, “If anybody is caught on the wrong side of the law, if anybody is traced to these activities if any bonded warehouse owner is traced, if any customs agent is traced to it, we will not spare anybody.
He warned them not to abuse his friendly disposition as this could be fatal because he has the capacity to bite
“Those of you who know the Yoruba proverb, because people say I smile too much, that I am too friendly, that I am too soft, and I am happy to be given all of that.
“But those who do not understand Yoruba should go and hire a consultant to translate the meaning of Eyin ta finbomo rerin naaa lafin geje”. (The same teeth we use to laugh with children are the same we use to bite them).
“I wish you a nice day”, he concluded in an expressionless manner.
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