Comptroller General, Nigeria Customs Service, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi MFR.

Stakeholders in Nigeria’s maritime industry have hailed the decision of President Bola Tinubu to approve the confirmation of Bashir Adewale Adeniyi MFR as the Comptroller General of the Nigeria Customs Service, saying it is very well-deserving.

The President had in a letter issued by the office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, announced the confirmation of the CG, which takes effect from October 19, 2023.

Also recal that President Tinubu had on Monday, June 19, 2023 appointed Adeniyi CG Customs in an acting capacity alongside other service chiefs and other heads of military and security agencies. Until this appointment, Adeniyi was a Deputy Comptroller General of the service.

Meanwhile,former National President of National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders NAGAFF, Dr. Eugene Nweke, one of the stakeholders who spoke in an interview, described his appointment as one of the best under the current administration and therefore his confirmation well-deserving.

Dr. Nweke, who doubles as the Secretary General of the Customs Consultative Council, noted that Adeniyi’s appointment is tantamount to placing a round peg in a round hole, given his wealth of experience, training and exposure as a former National Public Relations of the service.

According to him, the appointment is even more strategic given the timing, having come after eight years of imposition of a military officer as the head of a very specialised agency such as the Customs, which came with a lot of distortions in the processes of the service, discontent among the entire workforce and the unfortunate balkanisation of the image of the service among the comity of trading nations.

“The appointment of Wale Adeniyi as the substantive CG of Customs came at the most auspicious time to begin to repair and heal the damage of eight years in the psyche of the service. It also came at the time the service needed to be refocused and reposition among comity of Customs Administrations across the globe.

“His further confirmation just few months after is further a right step in the right direction to give him the right leverage as a substantive head of Nigeria’s Customs Administration to concentrate on the daunting job of redirecting and re-engineering the service to the path of professionalism, growth and progress because there is so much work to be done and such a professional is most suitable for the job” Dr. Nweke also said.

On areas of focus in rebuilding the battered service, the ex-NAGAFF boss noted that the new CG should be analytical in his approach, insisting that though all revenue leakages should be blocked and all payable duty and levies collected on behalf of the government, the driving force of the service in the current dispensation should not be revenue alone.

He said: “The CG should focus more on reassuring the stakeholders with a view to bringing back the confidence of investors in the supply chain. There is equally urgent need to re-build the image of the service among its peers in the global trade arena and we’re confident he is capable of achieving all these within a short time, given his pedigree.

“So much is expected from him, especially given the circumstances that prevailed in the service in the last eight years but we’re confident that he will deliver. For those of us who have monitored the trend of event, we knew that the day he was appointed CG Customs was the day he seized over $8million in cash at the Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos in 2024, so we have implicit confidence that he would deliver.”

It would be recalled that a letter by the Director, Information in the office of the SGF, Willie Bassey had announced that President Bola Tinubu has approved the confirmation of the appointment of Adewale Adeniyi as the Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service.

The letter reads in part: “The appointment takes effect from October 19, 2023 and his tenure is in accordance with the extant provisions of the Public Service Rules PSR. The President tasks him to bring his wealth of experience to bear on his new assignment.”