The Zonal Coordinator of Zone ‘A’ of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Assistant Comptroller General (ACG) Kaycee Ekekezie has revealed why Customs suspended over 300 licenses belonging to clearing agents and Customs brokers. This is even as the Zone ‘A’ Coordinator of Customs fingered a popular building at the Lagos port gates, the ‘Nnewi Building’ for being the base where smuggling syndicates, specializing in clearing document falsification, hacking of passwords issued to licensed Customs agents, take place.
Ekekezie who was addressing freight forwarders in Apapa recently, also advised them to be careful of whom they allow to be in control of their password, saying that some of their staff also compromise with the hackers.
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She advised agents to always change their password codes immediately they are given by the Customs, according to her, 70% of the cases of password hacking were successfully carried out on default passwords.
“Those Fraudsters hacking your password are there at Nnewi Building, you better be careful. Another thing is that you might be shocked that it is your boys that are doing this thing. It is true that we have minimized it to a certain extent, but going to the public DTI is what has affected most of you.
“It is the system that generates the code of your password. Once the password is given, you need to go back and change it, the same way you change the password of your ATM. When you go to a bank and collect an ATM, when you step out, you have to change it, if not, it would remain a default. 70 percent of password hacking cases that we have treated were committed on default password”
“If you come to us to complain that your password was hacked to clear a vehicle, you become our first suspect, you are the one we gave the password and you must prove to us that you did not intentionally give it out” she warned.
It would be recalled that the National President of ANLCA, Tony Iju Nwabunike had recently lamented that his clearance license as well as 300 others belonging to his association members were suspended by the Customs over cyber hacking complaints.