Ex-Vice President Atiku’s Record Missing At Nigeria Customs

The service records of former Vice President and Peoples Democratic Party Presidential candidate in the 2023 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, cannot be found at the Nigerian Customs Service, it has been revealed.

Atiku joined the Customs Service in 1969 after completing his Diploma in Law programme at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He retired in controversial circumstances in April 1989 after 20 years, rising to the position of Deputy Director of Customs, which is the equivalent of Deputy Comptroller-General.v

Investigations at the Customs offices in Abuja and Lagos revealed that the organisation the former Vice President served for 20 years cannot trace his file in the archives, which means the Customs Service does not have any document that can establish any relationship between it and the former Number two citizen of Nigeria.

A senior official of the organisation who spoke off the record said the leadership of NCS had made efforts in the past to get the service records of the PDP presidential candidate without any success.

“We have done everything to get former Vice President Atiku’s record of service without any success. He left the service in 1989 when the Headquarters was in Lagos.

“Some staff files could not be found in Lagos when the Headquarters was moving to Abuja due to either poor archiving and record-keeping or deliberate lifting of the files.

“At the moment, the Customs Service can only trace files of those that joined the service in the early 1990s. We don’t have anything in our records on employees of the generation of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar,” the senior Customs officer said.