The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, has recovered items worth millions of Naira from a large warehouse said to be owned by former Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service, NCS, Abdullahi Dikko-Inde.
This was revealed in a statement released on the commission’s website on Wednesday.
The warehouse is said to be located on Nnamdi Azikiwe Road Bye Pass, Kaduna, though it was not immediately clear whether it was the same property from where the anti-graft agency had recovered 17 exotic cars, some of them brand new, also purportedly belonging to the ex-Customs CG.
The statement read in part: “Operatives of the Commission’s Kaduna Zonal office acting on intelligence stormed the facility on Tuesday February 28 and executed a search warrant which led to the recovery of the following items:
1. 42 brand new customized yellow-coloured tricycles
2. 16 brand new cargo motorcycles
3. 1 brand new white 32-seater Nissan civilian bus
4. 1 MAN Diesel Truck
5. 515 brand new imported rugs of different colours and sizes
6. Two metal bullet proof safe with the sum of N 1,565 (one thousand five hundred and sixty five Naira only).
7. Documents of transactions in different currencies within and outside the country.”
Dikko had in August 2015 tendered his resignation as the Comptroller-General of Customs, shortly after President Muhammadu Buhari assumed power.
He said his decision to voluntarily resign was in order to give the younger ones the opportunity to take over the mantle of leadership at the Customs, adding that “we have no fear.”
But reports say the ex-CG knew he would be fired if he did not resign voluntarily.
Even Dikko gave that away during an interaction with newsmen on the reason he was resigning.
He said: “The time I’m leaving is the time I feel those young ones that have developed the software can come up and manage the software.”
He was referring to the introduction of a fully automated system of operation in the Customs which he claimed had increased the Service’s revenue generation by 20 percent.
“Don’t stay until you are asked to go. When you feel you have done so much and you believe in the system you have built, then why do you stay? Why don’t you be an umpire? Leave, be by the side and watch and advise,”he added.