… Launches mentor-mentee plan for senior officers
By Nkiruka Nnorom
The Nigeria Customs Service, NCS, has pledged to build its next decade of operations around strategic foresight with all proposals from its pioneer senior officer graduates to be embedded in a new 2026–2035 policy framework.
The Comptroller-General of Customs,Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, stated this at the graduation ceremony of 40 senior officers from the Advanced Senior Executive Course at the Nigerian Institute of International Affairs, NIIA, in Lagos.
Represented by Gabo Aliu, Comptroller, Federal Operations Unit, NCS, Adeniyi described global customs operations as dynamic and evolving, stressing that the Service must be futuristic and responsive to emerging trade realities. He added that incoming framework would be all-inclusive with the graduates’ deliverables forming the basis of the strategic policy direction for the next generation of customs officers.
Aliu said the CGC’s administration was forward-thinking, responsive and resilient with a clear objective to position the NCS at the front vanguard of trade, policy formulation and integration.
“Custom operation globally is dynamic, it’s evolving, we need to be futuristic, we need to be able to look ahead of what it is now, and the service in its wisdom is preparing future generations of custom officers that will respond to the dictates of the time going forward,” he said.
On expectations from the pioneering set, he said the CGC has approved a structured mentor-mentee programme, adding that the graduates would serve as ambassadors of the NCS and NIIA and were expected to cascade the knowledge acquired to future generations of officers.
He said: “For the pioneering set, the CGC has emphasised on a definite mentor-mentee programme, so they are going out as ambassadors of the NCS and NIIA, so we are looking that they are going to be impacting whatever they’ve learned here onto the future generation of custom officers, so it will be a win-win for the Nigerian Customs Service and the industry in general
Responding to the “no-regret strategies” proposed by the participants for the Service, he assured that management would review all submissions.
“All the things that they’ve brought forward will be appropriately looked at the management level, and that will be the policy thrust of the next generation looking at 2026 to 2035,” he stated.
For his part, Prof Eghosa Osaghae, Director-General, NIIA, described the graduation of senior customs officers as the high point of the institute’s collaboration with the Nigeria Customs Service, saying it was designed to reposition the Service for global trade complexities.
He noted that the partnership, established about 18 months ago, was focused on capacity building to align the NCS with the changing times, the complexities of world trade and customs services.
He noted that the programme particularly examined trade facilitation under the African Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA, as well as shifts in global tariffs and the push for standardisation of customs operations.
“Technological solutions can be pursued. We can have AI; we can all those things, but if the human factor doesn’t also lift up itself to be at the same level of these changes, we cannot no so far,” he added.
Dr. Adesuwa Erediauwa, Head\Director of Bashir Adeniyi Centre for International Trade and Investment (BACITI) at the NIIA, the organisers of the training, charged graduating senior customs officers to become “interpreters of change” and architects of institutional resilience as the Nigeria Customs Service prepares for 2035 and beyond.
She noted that customs administrations globally now face shifting trade routes, AI-driven border management, geopolitical tensions, climate change and supply chain disruptions. “In this kind of world, yesterday’s methods are no longer sufficient for even today’s challenges, not to talk of tomorrow’s challenges,” he stated.
She stressed that future customs officer “must not just be an administrator or a gatekeeper” but must become “an analyst of uncertainty, a strategist, and an innovator.”
