A northern group, the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum, has asked the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), to urgently cancel the promotion in the Nigeria Customs Service as it is selective.
According to the group, the current policy of promotion in the service smacks of administrative abuse, injustice and can breed indiscipline in the system.
The National President of the AYCF, Alhaji Yerima Shettima, in a statement in Kaduna on Sunday, said Buhari needed to intervene in the matter.
The AYCF had cried out over what it alleged was the selective promotion of officers and men of the NCS and called on the Customs management to halt the exercise for the sake of institutional growth.
The group noted that the NCS refused to heed its plea over the controversial policy of elevation of a certain group of officers in the service.
Consequently, the AYCF called on the relevant federal agencies, especially the Presidency, to intervene in the matter so as to save the nation from national calamity.
The statement read in part, “Information available to the Arewa Youth Consultative Forum confirmed that despite our plea to the Nigeria Customs Service on February 27, 2022, to reconsider its controversial plan to elevate certain officers, who joined the service between 2009 and 2015, and leaving behind those who joined the service between 1992 and 1994, the service has proceeded with the widely-condemned plan.
“We wish to re-state our stand against this policy that smacks of administrative abuse, injustice and to further declare as follows:
“That this selective exclusion in the name of elevation plan should be cancelled immediately so that everybody can now be carried along.
“The gap or vacuum created due to the embargo on employment in the service between 1994 and 2009 was not caused by the older officers and they should not be made to suffer for it like sacrificial lambs.
“Evidently, this group of officers has already suffered a lot in the service in the form of delay in promotion (some stayed up to eight years in one rank), poor remuneration, etc.
“That if this plan stands, it may breed indiscipline, low-morale, low-productivity, feeling of rejection, alienation, work at cross-purposes, low esteem, sabotage, dichotomy and failure in meeting up with targets.”
Copyright PUNCH.
