He is the poster boy on how a federal agency with the task of collecting revenue for the federation should be run. President Bola Tinubu and lawmakers in both arms of the National Assembly have not held back in profusely celebrating his accomplishments as Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service after just a year in office. Before he took the Service to record collection of revenues that crossed the N6.1 trillion mark for 2024, he had been celebrated for the seizure of $8,065,612 million cash at Murtala Mohammed International Airport, Lagos in January 2020 where he was Controller well ahead of his appointment as Comptroller-General.
What may be lost on Nigerians is Mr. Adeniyi’s media background. He is the longest serving national spokesman of the Customs having held the post for 10 years. He is the vice president of the Governing Council of Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (FNIPR). He holds a Master of Arts Degree in Communication Science he obtained in November 2013 from the Universitaire Svizzera D’Italiana (USI) – Lugano—Switzerland.
Being a longstanding media manager afforded him the opportunity to traverse the entire Customs processes both within Nigeria and beyond. That, to a large extent, prepared him for the job. Is there a nexus between professional media management and good public administration? Wale Adeniyi is a fine gentleman by all definitions. At 59, he is very close to meeting the 60 years threshold for retirement from public service. And that is the downside of his story. Will just two years be adequate for his strategy of minimizing the human element in the collection of taxes and optimising Information and Communication Technology (ICT) be consolidated? That is up to President Tinubu
