The Nigeria Customs Service has issued one of its strongest internal wake-up calls yet, as Comptroller-General Adewale Adeniyi challenged senior officers to confront the discipline gaps and structural weaknesses slowing the Service’s effectiveness. This charge set the tone as the 2025 CGC Conference opened in Abuja on Thursday.
Held at the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton, the conference brought senior management together to reflect on institutional shortcomings and chart a more coordinated, accountable and results-driven future. The theme for this year’s gathering—“Building Future Partnerships: Lessons from the Customs-PACT Conference”—was chosen to draw direct lessons from the highly successful continental summit hosted by the Service only a day earlier.
Adeniyi told officers that the discipline and strategic clarity that delivered the C-PACT Summit must now be replicated internally. He reminded participants that the global engagement brought together customs chiefs, private-sector leaders and regional blocs from across Africa—yet such external credibility would mean little if internal systems remain weak.
He warned that the Service cannot sustain international respect without confronting its internal realities, urging officers to “look inward, ask uncomfortable questions and fix what is not working.”
The CGC said the conference is designed to extract the guiding principles behind the C-PACT Summit—coordination, unified communication and disciplined execution—and embed them into the Service’s everyday culture. He recalled how, ahead of the summit, Customs held weekly coordination meetings for 16 straight weeks, resolved conflicts rapidly and maintained unity because, in his words, “failure was not an option with the world watching.”
The two-day programme will feature panels, rigorous presentations and candid conversations, where senior officers are expected to drop rank-based barriers and focus on ideas that can strengthen Customs operations nationwide.
