The Controller of the Seme Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, Comptroller Timi Bomodi has disclosed that the Command is currently working on a Skills Acquisition Centres SAC for dwellers within the border towns and villages as a way of giving them genuine sources of livelihood so as to shun smuggling and other criminal activities.
Shedding more light on the proposed skill acquisition centre, he said that it would be replicated across all borders in the country, is the Commands idea of providing gainful, legitimate source of livelihood to border community dwellers as an alternative to smuggling, arguing that smuggling has been a global challenge not limited to Nigeria alone.
According to him, “As we all know, no country in the world including more advanced economies like the U.S. has successfully wiped out smuggling. America has not succeeded in wiping out smuggling; It is a global phenomenon. What we are trying to do here is to reduce it to the barest minimum. Here we have identified certain peculiarities and it is not only at the Seme krake Border axis that the centre will be established.
“The skill acquisition is something that is common to borders especially all over Nigeria and in the entire West Africa, and it is a fact that most border communities lack basic infrastructure and there are little or no jobs there.”
“So we are trying to adopt another approach, which is human angle instead of use of force. People will lend themselves to some of these illegal activities when they perceive they can’t get jobs and not because they want to break the laws but because they want to survive.”
“So what we are trying to do here with the approval of the Comptroller General is to set up Skills Acquisition Centres SAC, which is novel and hopefully will be replicated across Nigerian borders. The Skills Acquisition Centres will provide multiple opportunities for border community dwellers to be trained in different vocations. You have people to be trained on how to make clothes, some wood-works, catering etc.
“As soon as they are equipped with these skills, they have something to exchange for money and make career out of it rather than waiting for non-existent jobs. We believe that these people can actually, with the right incentives, become employers of labour. If two per cent of the population of border community dwellers participate in this programme, in less than five years, we can change the narrative of border community dwellers because there is a potential for exponential increase in earnings.
“In adopting this particular strategy, the community dwellers will know that they can now feed themselves and their families. When the community dwellers can take care of their livelihood, then the tendency to lend themselves to smuggling will be reduced if not erased completely. Overtime, they will come to the realisation that in doing their legitimate trades and vocations, there is nothing to be afraid of anymore. There fear that their goods would be seized will no longer be there.”
Comptroller Bomodi however expressed profound gratitude to the Comptroller General of the Service, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi MFR for providing purposeful leadership for the Service, which, he argued had impacted positively on the officers and men.
He argued that the current management under Adeniyi has provided the operational tools, incentives and other morale-boosting welfare packages including accommodation for all cadres of personnel, adding that no one has any reason to complain in the current circumstance.
