Samson Echenim 
As against the old norms, the Nigeria Customs Service operations systems are changing fast, and only people who are IT-compliant can effectively contribute to the agency’s human capacity asset.
This is the assertion of Customs national Public Relations Officer, Assistant Comptroller of Customs, Abdullahi Maiwada, during a media chat with The Nigerian Economy in his office at the Customs headquarters in Abuja on Wednesday.
Maiwada who was responding to a question about the technological skills need of the Customs in view of its massive modernization and digitalization project and the ongoing but muted recruitment exercise, clearly stated that every staff of Nigeria Customs now needs to have a measure of tech skills to remain relevant and contribute meaningfully to the agency’s operation.
“In fact, the recent recruitment initially was meant to get ICT professionals because of the modernisation project. And that is why at every stage of our development, every aspect of our modernisation, you can see inclusivity of our officers. Officers are involved thoroughly in it. Be it B’Odogwu, be it non-intrusive inspection, be it cybersecurity, our officers are involved thoroughly. We are deviating from what happened in the last arrangement,” Maiwada said.
“Now you can see clearly from source code, from everything, our officers are involved in it. In fact, for the non-intrusive, we have two. Our officers went to China for factory acceptance test. First, our officers are custom-trained based on our needs. And apart from that, they will also go for factory acceptance to know that what we suggested, the manufacturers manufactured exactly what we requested for.”
In terms of this recruitment, the Customs national image maker said there are various disciplines within customs and the Service also opened up for general duty officers and support staff officers. However, he stressed that even the general duty officers will be ICT-compliant.
He said: “I cannot be PRO if I’m analogue. Yes, I cannot effectively manage communication of NCS if I am analogue. That’s just a fact. I must be ICT-inclined. But for technical needs, definitely there are slots for other aspects of our modernisation. For instance, within the ICT department, there are some technical expertise, there are vacancies for accountants.
“In fact, for the first time, there are even slots for public relations. We are recruiting officers as PR officers, not general duty officers who will be taken to the PR because of maybe academic expediency or qualification or other reasons. We are recruiting even public relations officers, part of the vacancies we have. So, it’s an inclusive process.”
Speaking on the recruitment process which the service embarked upon recently, he explained that there is administrative delay, but assured the process would soon come through.
“Our recruitment has a process and that process will be adhered to. We are not going to do what is called silent recruitment. If we have employed one person, definitely the public will know. So, we have done the first stage and we have not promised anybody that this is when we are going to finish the second stage. Yes, there might be some administrative delays or something like that, but it’s for a good.
“We want to get the process very right and very soon, as soon as we have done with clearing all the administrative glitches, definitely the next stage of the recruitment process will be announced and it will be public. That we surely want to publish on newspapers and we want to make it public. There are criteria for selection of candidates. We have slots less than 4,000 and we have over 500,000 applicants. Definitely, we need to sit down and come up with a defined procedure to select based on our geographical disposition, federal character and select those who will move to the next stage of the exercise, which you know, is going to be aptitude test. After that test, then there’s another stage,” he explained.
He also spoke on the adoption of Customs new indigenous trade platform, B’Odogwu, maintain that the innovation is worth every dime and effort spent on it.
Maiwada said: “It’s a gradual process. It’s not something that will happen just drastically like that. It’s a process. When one is going down, the other will be going up. We are also doing stakeholders engagement; trying to see those who work within that band system to understand what we are doing; to understand how the systems works.
“Just now, one of the PROs called me, informing about the challenge they are facing with their stakeholders. So, they want to do another round of sensitization for their stakeholders on why they need to embrace the new system. So, it’s not really about bringing a new technology. It’s about convincing people, showing them why they need to participate in a role in that system and cue into that system. And I’m sure we are getting it right. It’s a steady development. I don’t have the statistics of the number of declarations we have, but I know we are moving forward.”
