By Haruna Salami
The Nigeria Customs Service, NCS has assured the Senate Committee on Anti-Corruption and Financial Crimes that the new electronic auction (E-auction) will eliminate corruption in it’s activities.
This was part of the report of the level of implementation of the “National Anti-Corruption Strategy (NACD) 2017 -2021 presented to the Senate Committee by NCS.According to Customs, the E-auction is a new world standard procedure, “a system which is in conflict with the previous manual system that was fraught with corruption”.
Speaking with journalists after the session with the Senate Committee, Uba Garba Mohammed, Acting Assistant Comptroller General in charge of Enforcement, Investigation and Inspection, who re-presented the Comptroller General said “this system does not know anybody. When you click on the system, irrespective of status, it does not recognize region or favouritism. It is only the procedure based on the system that is recognised”.
He said “any Nigerian is free to access the system and if he or she is lucky he or she will get whatever may be the nature of the goods without any human interference”.
The Acting ACG said the E-auction has eliminated corruption to the extent that even the CG cannot use his discretionary power to favour anybody as the only thing the system recognises is proper procedure.
Other agencies of the Federal Government, including the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, National Information Technology Development Agency, NITDA, etc came before the Senate Committee to show their implementation status of the National Anti-Corruption Strategy, NACS.
The session was supported by partners in the Anti-Corruption war, including MacArthur Foundation.
