Reps invite customs boss, others over refusal to retire

House of Representatives Committee on Public Petitions has invited the Comptroller General of Nigerian Customs Service, Ademola Adeniji, to appear before it on Tuesday, February 19, 2025.

The call is to answer a petition before it over the refusal of some top officials of the service to leave the service after their due retirement dates.

Obasi-Pherson Help Foundation had petitioned the 10th House alleging that some Assistant Comptrollers and Comptrollers were due for retirement but have blatantly refused to leave the service. They named the affected officers as Imam, Umar and Egwu, all Assistant Comptrollers and Awe, Fatia and Faith, Comptrollers as the culprits.

The House noted that the CG has a duty as a public officer to explain to Nigerians what the true position is.

“Nigerians deserve to know the truth of the matter and it is only the CG that can clarify the situation. We are elected to serve the people and ensuring that all government agencies function effectively is part of that service. In this era when most of our youths are looking for job, it will be wrong for the older ones who are due for retirement to refuse to go,” Mike Etaba, Chairman of the Committee on Public Petitions, said.

“That is not to say we shall take sides, far from it. We treat each case on merit ensuring that justice is given at all times to the deserving,” he added.

In a related development, the Committee has threatened to order the arrest of the Director General and Chief Executive Officer of Nigerian Identity Management Commission, NIMC if she fails to come in person to answer charges on refusal to pay for state of the art software development project installed and deployed to the commission by a private firm, Truid Limited.

Truid Limited is alleging a breach of license agreement by NIMC. According to E. R. Opara, counsel to Truid Limited, the agreement is premised on an arrangement whereby the Truid Limited funded, developed and deployed tokenization system without any financial obligation from NIMC. Truid was to get returns on her investment through patronage of service providers and the proceeds shared on an agreed ratio. This was to run for an initial period of ten years from 2021 when the software was deployed.

According to the petition, things were going on smoothly until the appointment of the new DG of NIMC who has been trying to truncate the agreement.

Reacting to the submissions of the counsels of both the petitioners and the respondents, Chairman of the Committee, Mike Etaba frowned on the continuous absence of the NIMC Director General despite several invitations.

“If she fails to show up at the next hearing of this case, we’ll have no option than to ask the Inspector General of police to bring her. How can an official of government treat constituted authority with such levity? We can no longer condone such attitude”.