The Nigeria Customs Service on Monday confirmed its plans to retire 304 top officers, including two deputy comptroller generals, three assistant comptroller generals.
Other affected officers are 13 comptrollers, 39 deputy comptrollers and 45 assistant comptrollers.
Those also listed on the retirement notice are 71 chief superintendents of customs, 33 superintendents, 31 deputy superintendents, 32 assistant superintendents I, 27 assistant superintendents 2, seven inspectors and one assistant inspector.
The National Public Relations Officer of the NCS, Mr Joseph,Attah said, “This is routine and it is normal to retire when your time is due. Those on the list are to statutorily retire on the date indicated against their names
It is normal for the service to prepare the list of those who will be statutorily due for retirement; sometimes six months or a year ahead to prepare them for it.”
The NCS spokesman said the 304 senior officers were due for retirement by virtue of attaining either 60 years of age or the statutory 35 years in service, in line with the civil service rule.
It added that the affected officers would be disengaged from service by 2020.
The NCS in April announced plans to recruit 3,200 officers into the service to fill existing vacancies.
Then Acting Deputy Comptroller General in charge of Human Resource Development, Sanusi Umar, explained that 800 would be recruited to fill vacancies in the support staff for superintendent cadre; 2,400 would fill that of customs inspector and customs assistant cadre in the general duty categories.
PUNCH.