The Commandant of the Nigeria Customs Training and Doctrine Command, Gwagwalada, Abuja, Adewale Adeniyi, on Friday gave an account of how the command was attacked and vandalised by over 4,000 hoodlums in search of palliative warehouse.
Adeniyi, who conducted journalists round the premises to see the extent of damage, explained that some Customs officers had a four-hour dialogue with the hoodlums on Tuesday, explaining to them that the Command is a training school and not a palliative warehouse.
He further said that the hoodlums struck despite conducting four of them round the command to confirm that there was no palliative warehouse.
“On Tuesday, a day after breaking a warehouse in Gwagwalada to loot palliatives, the hoodlums came to the training command in search of palliatives.
“More than 4,000 of them laid siege in front of the command. We learnt of their arrival, and we came out unarmed to engage them for four hours.
“We listened to them. They told us they were in search of palliatives, that they are hungry and angry, and we told them it is a training school and there are no palliatives here.
“They insisted that there are warehouses behind our command, and even requested to get free passage to search for the warehouses.
“We obliged them but with a condition for them to bring four of them for the search, while some officers will conduct them round.
“They went in and discovered there was no warehouse around the training school. Some of them decided to break our perimeter fencing and started shooting,” said Adeniyi, an Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs.
He, however, explained that the Command had no option but to repel the hoodlums when the officers realised that the hoodlums came around to attack and harm them.
“We responded swiftly to repel the attackers and secure the premises.
”The Command got support from security agencies like the 176 Guard Brigade, Police and Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps.
“Some of the officers in the Command were injured, while some building blocks were affected,” added Adeniyi, a former public relations officer of the Nigeria Customs Service.
He confirmed that six persons have been arrested in connection with the attack.
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