The Nigeria Customs Service on Thursday, 20 November 2025, declared open the 2025 Comptroller-General of Customs’ Conference in Abuja with a strategic call for senior officers to confront internal weaknesses undermining operational efficiency across the Service.
The conference, held at the Congress Hall of the Transcorp Hilton Hotel, is designed to review performance, strengthen organisational cohesion, and chart a new strategic direction. This year’s theme, “Building Future Partnerships: Lessons from the Customs-PACT Conference,” reflect the Service’s focus on translating the success of its recent continental engagement into institutional reforms.
In his opening remarks, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, emphasized that the discipline, coordination and clarity that delivered the highly successful Customs Partnership for African Cooperation in Trade (C-PACT) Summit must now be replicated within the Service.
He noted that only a day earlier, the Service hosted customs chiefs, private-sector leaders and regional partners from across the continent, demonstrating Nigeria’s leadership in advancing the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
However, Adeniyi cautioned that such external success must be matched with internal integrity.
“You can’t sustain external credibility without internal integrity. Turn the mirror inward and force honest discussions about what is working, what is failing and what must change,” he said.
Reflecting on the conference theme, the CGC stated that the aim was to extract the core principles behind the C-PACT Summit’s success coordination, unified messaging, disciplined execution and embed them permanently in the Service’s operational culture.
He recalled that in the buildup to the continental summit, the Service held weekly coordination meetings for 16 consecutive weeks, aligned messages with AfCFTA requirements, resolved conflicts promptly and functioned as a unified team.
According to him, “failure was not an option with the world watching.”
The two-day conference, he added, will feature panel sessions, technical presentations and open-floor engagements designed to stimulate strategic thinking, promote teamwork and encourage frank conversations where “ideas matter more than rank.”
