The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has initiated an engagement with the West Africa Security Project (WASP) to acquaint officers on security awareness for effective trade facilitation and effective border security.
Addressing the delegates of the West Africa Security Project during a meeting at the Customs headquarters, Abuja, on Tuesday, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, described the project as a medium that will benefit officers of the service in the area of curbing smuggling and illegal trafficking of substances.
The Customs boss, who supported the collaboration between the Nigeria Customs Service and WASP, also described the initiative as great chance for officers to perform security duties.
Adeniyi outlined some of the benefits of the program to include cargo profiling, small arms and light weapon handling, global shield programs which deals with chemicals and radioactive elements, to share resources with stakeholders for synergy, amongst others.
“There is an existing project managed by the World Bank that looks at the Lagos-Abidjan corridor whose aim is to promote trade facilitation. Bringing in this new project that looks at the security aspect will boost our performances and bring a lot of opportunities for us.
“We will be able to account for 60% of the GDP if we are able to cooperate effectively. This project requires the cooperation and collaboration of all the Customs administrations involved,” Adeniyi said.
WASP Project Manager, Terry Wall, said some of the benefits of the program include identification of high risk cargo, provision of training of national Customs Enforcement Network (nCEN), delivery of refresher training in the use of Customs Enforcement Network (CEN), joint activity to deliver geospatial intelligence and high level end-of-project evaluation with the donor.