OPINION: Customs Needs to Examine More ‘Nuras’ Still in Service

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Penultimate Monday, the social media was agog with reports of an Assistant Superintendent of the Nigeria Customs Service Nura Dalhatu who stormed the headquarters in Abuja, demanding to take over from his boss, Col Hameed Ali.


In a swift reaction, the Public Relations Officer of the service, Joseph Attah said the officer was “not in the right frame of mind”


However, reactions have continued to trail the incident, stakeholders who spoke with our correspondent expressed divergent views. 

While some reacted to the action of Nura in disbelief, mockery and even casts doubts on his mental wellness, others believe that the officer was speaking the mind of officers of the service whom were already tired of the leadership style of Hameed Ali, but many of them were too scared.


It is expected that Hameed Ali’s romance and close relationship with President Muhammadu Buhari supposed to have translated to a better deal for customs officers who are today considered as part of most  impoverished public servants in Nigeria. 


It is likely that, Nura like any other Citizens who applied to serve his father land and contribute his quota towards nations building as a properly trained, professional career Customs officer, was having aspirations to attain the highest ranks the Nigeria Customs Service provided. 


But the body language of President Muhammadu Buhari has recently shown that the era of career officers attaining the coveted CGC position is gone for good, hence the decision of Nura to take laws into his hands. 


In his reactions on the unfortunate “Monday Morning Drama” former president of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders (NAGAFF) Dr. Eugene Nweke said perhaps, as a younger officer with professional aspirations, Nura is unsettled that the incumbent CGC being a retired Soldier, with age above 70 years, has occupied that topmost echelon in the Service for four years going, far beyond the external “interventionist welcome”, and without clarity to its termination date, in the face of the “Next Level” beckoning. 


He said “The underlying word here is “Professional Hopelessness”.Wherefore, if not so, it may be that, presupposes Nura’s mental sanity is actually intact, knowing that, the Nigeria Customs Service is a regimented organization,  then, it could mean that:His professional career aspirations can no longer be guaranteed, with a sense of insecure and a feeling of hopelessness has setted in”


“Nura’s by this his act is probably protesting  to the incumbent CGC that his time is up, he has over stayed his welcome, indirectly informing him of his professional aspirations”


“A subtle suggestion to the incumbent CGC and the Federal Government in general, to relinquish Customs Administration back to a professional career Customs Officer, irrespective of any consideration.

Nura might have weighed the years he has putting into the Service, and the years he has left, then feeling dissatisfied, hopeless and disappointed with himself and the Service resorts to end his services to the Nigeria Customs Service, as such chooses to do so in a sensational but heroic or cerebral manner, hence, initiating an “unheard of” kind of action, to the astonishment of colleagues and the public”


“Nura might be propelled (acting a script) or manipulated by a higher force stronger than his normal sanity or was there any official misgivings, in which Nura suffered injustice, and resorted do other wise”

Nweke said
Which ever school of thoughts emanating from any quarter, the good news is that, the management has apprehended Nura Dahaltu for questioning and reexamination of his mental wellness. 


If at the end, the Service proves that, Nura’s mental wellness is not intact, it becomes an obvious pointer, that, the Management has to carry out a general mental Reevaluation of its junior officers, including those of Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone A who “accidentally discharge” their weapons at every opportunity.


It is possible that so many of them may be under uncommon family and economic pressure in the face of ailing economic hardship in the land, where cases of suicide is on the increase. 

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