The 62nd regular board meeting of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) may be the last major official assignment that the Comptroller General of the agency, Adewale Adeniyi, will be coordinating as the head of the law enforcement agency before embarking on a compulsory three months terminal leave which is expected to mark his exit from the Customs in the country.
Adeniyi, who is statutorily expected to commence his terminal leave next week, is yet to get President Bola Tinubu’s nod for tenure extension even after presenting the request before the president for an approval, just as it was done for 12 senior officers who were allowed to remain in service for additional months considering their role in the agency.
Except that the President issues a fresh directive before next week that assent to Adeniyi’s request for tenure elongation, the Customs boss would be expected to handover affairs of the NCS to the most senior officer who would coordinate the agency’s affairs on an Acting capacity pending when President Tinubu would decide either to appoint the officer as the substantive CGC or another person to lead the agency.
The expectation of the Customs boss before now had been that the president would approve his request immediately after returning to the country from his foreign trip but the hopes were dashed after no one from the Presidency and the Minister of Finance and Coordinating Minister of the Economy, Wale Edun, whose ministry oversee the agency’s affairs, could not interpret the body language of President Tinubu on the matter.
A senior aide to the president, who spoke anonymously, told The Guild on Friday that for now, no one can determine the president’s stance on the Custom boss, saying everyone is watching as the events unfolds in the country.
Rather, Edun was said to have instructed Adeniyi to proceed on his retirement leave as stipulated by law and handover all document relating to the Customs affairs to most senior officer in the agency, to avoid any leadership vacuum.
As gathered, the minister was said to have directed the Customs boss to proceed on the terminal leave at the Service’s Headquarters in Maitama, Abuja after the board meeting which served as a statutory forum to evaluate the Service’s operational strategies, fiscal contributions, and reform-driven activities, particularly in light of its Q1 2025 performance which the agency recorded a historic ₦1.75 trillion in revenue with over N121 million realized through the Federal Operating Unit (FOU) Zone A, Ikeja, under the former Comptroller, Kola Oladeji, exceeding its target by ₦106.5 billion and marking a nearly 30 percent increase compared to the same period in 2024.
Edun, who described the board meeting as productive and reaffirmed the importance of open governance and accountability within public institutions, was said to have told Adeniyi that proceeding on the leave would prevent any public outcry that could trail his continue stay in office when the president had not approved his request.
After the meeting with the minister, Adeniyi was said to have embarked on some last minute actions in fears that President Tinubu may not approve his tenure elongation request.
It was learnt that the CGC last minute actions have attracted silent criticism from senior and junior Customs officers who considered the move as one that was against the agency’s ethics.
Among the action was unilaterally auctioning vehicles that were forfeited to the Federal Government by their owners following a court order secured across the country.
A Custom officer, who does not want his name in public, disclosed to our correspondent that one of the place the CGC auctioned vehicles already documented by the House of Representative Committee on Customs and Excise is the FOU Zone A, Ikeja where vehicles were auctioned without any check or caution from the Comptroller Muhammed Shuaib, who was described as his stooge.
The officer added that these were vehicles seized from smugglers across the Southwest States including Ogun, Lagos, Oyo, Osun, Ekiti, and Ondo states, by the previous Comptroller, Oladeji, who introduced strategic enforcement plan that resulted in many achievements, but was redeployed by the CGC for not doing his bidding as expected.
According to him, we cannot wait for the CGC to leave considering the atrocities that were perpetrated through his office by the stooge he deployed to key positions in the service.
Another officer added: “It is sad that under the current CGC, we have witnessed abnormalities without any check and that is why we cannot wait for him to leave. And I hope that the President let him leave as fast as possible.
“Aside from that, he should also be probed. I am sure that many issues would be unravelled through an independent probe. We know some of the issues but because we cannot speak publicly, we just allow the discoveries to remain where they are to avoid victimization and others”.
