The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) on Friday announced the creation of Customs Police.
The Comptroller General of NCS, Col Hammed Ibrahim Ali (rtd) stated the creation of customs police is to serve as an internal mechanism to check and ensure discipline among its personnel.
He disclosed this on Friday during the commemoration of International Customs Day (ICD) held in Abuja.
He said, “Within us we need to police ourselves and it is essential we have an internal mechanism to check and ensure discipline and to that effect we have just commissioned our own Customs Police.
“The Customs police were trained at the Nigeria military police school in Zaria, Kaduna State as securing borders is one of the challenges of the service.
“As at today smuggling is one of our most difficult and challenging issue, to solve the problem a regional security strategy composed of Nigeria, Chad, Cameroon and Benin Republic called Securité Par Collaboration (SPC++) was introduced.
“In the bid for Nigeria to diversify resources the NCS can be a safety valve for the country because in 2017 they generated N1,037,102,179,400.58 in addition to various seizures of 4,492 with DPV of N12,777,321,405.74. ICD is a day set aside by the world customs organization (WCO) for global customs community to celebrate with particular focus on a chosen theme. ” Hameed Ali stated.