Agency denies sacking 400 officers, meets with stakeholders

The Comptroller-General of Customs, retired Col. Hameed Ali, on Monday in Abuja denied sacking 400 officers in the ongoing restructuring of the service.

He told newsmen that he was rather holding meetings with stakeholders to strategise on how to achieve better service delivery in the country.

He said, "I am not aware of any sacking; you are just telling me; I don’t know.''

He said that there was need for Nigeria to focus more on export than import, adding that Nigeria could not grow as a nation if it kept on importing goods and services.

Ali said there was need to review policies so as to focus on how to regenerate exportation.

"We must begin to focus on export than import; we are used to importing more.

He noted that 99 per cent of NCS business was clearing of imports.

He said only little was being exported and ``we cannot grow as a nation if we keep importing''.

"Anytime we import, we are spending money out to somebody. We are growing somebody else industry; we should look at the policy in order to grow our economy.

"Therefore if we want to grow our economy, we have to put more emphasis on exportation than importation.

"We are doing restructuring; I have mandate given to me by Mr President to reform, structure and to raise revenues.

“And in the course of restructuring, a lot of things will have to happen and the visit is one of them,’’ Ali said.