Loading ...Abdullahi Nde Dikko deployed manipulative strategies, dare-devil threats, falsification, ruthlessness, impunity, bribery, allocation of seized containers to those who aided his mission to cling the position of the Comptroller-General of Customs and extend his tenure. These included doctoring documents and minutes of board meetings.
The question today is where is the man who government declared wanted for corruption and perennial impunity? Today, all the noise made about Dikko has fizzled out and the man, we learnt, has relocated his entire family to his mansion in Dubai. Life goes on there. Case closed! That’s how Nigeria is run and we are expected to become a nation which competes with others in the comity of nations in the 21st century. A big illusive and elusive dream! You’d say.
Do you wonder why the Nigeria Customs Service has perennially remained under the control and clinch of the Northern officers? Do you wonder why with his atrocities, the man at the then helm of affairs of Nigeria Customs Service still walks a freeman, despite government order of arrest of Dikko? Do you wonder why NCS was run the way it was run under Dikko with over 60% of revenue generated diverted into his pocket and those of his cronies? He made enough sacrifice for the Northerners! The management structure of NCS has a lot to say about this.
According to a serving senior officer who spoke on condition of anonymity, “many people fell victims of Dikko’s untamed desperation and tyranny”.
Going down memory lane, our source rendered a spine-chilling revelation of NCS under Dikko:
“When the fortunes of Nigeria Customs Service was abysmally falling despite surging commercial activities, it was resolved that a person of impeccable character should be looked for to head the Service”
“It was at that point that Dikko and some of his northern clique resorted to ruthlessness as a way of achieving their aim. That included doctoring of documents and minutes of board meetings”.
Reacting to a question posed on our source regarding the recent order by the National Assembly to Customs Board to as a matter of urgency reinstate with promotion, Dr. David O. Agbaje, who was illegally retired from the service on flimsy reason that he had eye surgery, our source revealed:
“From what I know, the man you enquired about is Dr. David Olusegun Agbaje, an Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs. Indications then were that Dr. Agbaje’s profile threatened Dikko and his camp. Dr. Agbaje is an award-winning ACG whose integrity, honesty and patriotism were then being cited both nationally and internationally. This did not seem to go down well with Dikko and his camp. Hence, their resolve to resort to forgery and manipulation of records to ditch him out of the Service”
“Dr. Agbaje’s calm approach under the circumstance is the best. Now that the National Assembly has ordered for his reinstatement, it is only expedient that justice be done. They have severally set him up and sacked him on trumped up charges of length of service and health challenges in 2011 and 2013. This is a man who has been certified by competent eye authorities to be fit for his assignments. In order to undermine that, Dikko and his co-travelers went and collaborated with a medical doctor who we learnt was a Gynecologist to give a report to the board on the eye status of Dr. Agbaje. That is aside the attestation and clean bill of health given by hospitals and doctors that carried out the surgery on Dr. Agbaje’s eyes”
“Dikko simply forged papers with which he compulsorily retired Dr. Agbaje. He was simply threatened by the man’s profile of integrity, honesty, dedication to duty amongst others. Dikko felt without getting the man out of his way, his chances of extending his tenure as CG was slim. He did the unimaginable, though expected from a desperate man by working with his co-travelers to set the honest man up by claiming he had eye problem. There is no law that states that someone with eye defects should not work in the Customs. In the case of Dr. Agbaje, he has had correctional cataract surgery in his eyes and his doctors and other professionals have certified him fit”.
Pressing our source further, he gave a disheartening account of how Customs was run under Dikko:
“Threat to life, sectionalism, ruthlessness, fleecing of the Service were among the vices which constituted the brand which Dikko promoted in the Customs. From what we gathered, as it relates to Dr. Agbaje’s case. I have it on good record that part of the strategy used was to curry a female officer from Yoruba group called Comptroller Nike Oladunni who profited a lot from Dikko’s corrupt largesse both in promotion and siphoning revenue accruing to the Customs. She is a woman Dr. Agbaje had taken as a sister and supported extensively. Dikko cashed in and lured her to do his evil bidding by making her irresistible offers. The woman sold out. We even learnt that Dikko cornered a blood sister of Dr. Agbaje through Comptroller Nike Oladunni who is her childhood friend. Also included in the evil clique is one retired ACG Francis Ade Fadahunsi with the single purpose of dealing ruthlessly with the man. Dikko continued to reward them by allotting seized containers to them on a regular basis in addition to other favours”.
