Frankly speaking, Frank Onyeka, the new Customs helmsman at Tin Can insists his mission at his new duty post is not any different from the vision and mission of the Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi. Since his appointment as Comptroller General of Customs, Adeniyi has not compromised on professionalism and excellence. His watch word has been hard work ,and more hard work ,without compromising trade facilitation and standards. Onyeka faces a daunting task surpassing the record he met on ground, but according to him, this was not going to be contest between him and the immediate past Customs Area Controller, Dera Nnadi, who has just been promoted to the rank of an Assistant Comptroller General, but that of building on the legacies left behind by his predecessor. Said he: ” But trust me, i am not here to challenge the records i met on ground. What i intend to do is to bolster the performance set by my predecessor and improve on them”, he told Shipping World in an Exclusive interview weekend.
The Customs Chief said top on his agenda would be to bring back on board clients of the command who had walked away in protest. He would ensure that there was full compliance by importers who were reluctant to position their containers for full examination should look elsewhere. To this end, he said the focus would be on containers moving to bonded terminals. He said the era when such cargo would be moved directly to terminals without physical examination was gone.He explained that in achieving such a milestone, continuous engagement with relevant stakeholders would be key to enable all parties be on the same page . Comptroller Onyeka explained that collaboration remains the focal point of his administration adding that ” thinking outside the box is what we intend to do to beat whatever records we met on ground.