Customs chief receives international award for communications work

Nigeria Customs Comptroller-General Adewale Adeniyi has received a special Award of Excellence at the 2026 International Public Relations Association Golden World Awards in Athens, Greece. The National Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, Abdullahi Maiwada, announced the recognition in a statement. He said the award acknowledged the service’s approach to transparent communication, stakeholder engagement and ethical public relations during its reform programme.

According to Maiwada, the recognised work supported public understanding of initiatives focused on modernising Customs operations, improving trade facilitation and strengthening institutional transparency. Adeniyi described the honour as international recognition of the service’s reform efforts. The comptroller-general said the award would encourage the NCS to expand its use of emerging technology, including artificial intelligence, in public communication and engagement with stakeholders.

He said the service had already begun using AI tools and hoped that the NCS and other Nigerian agencies would feature more prominently among global award recipients by 2027. Adeniyi said communication was essential to the success of government reforms because citizens and stakeholders needed to understand their objectives, implementation difficulties and expected benefits. He linked the NCS reform agenda to President Bola Tinubu’s economic policies on trade competitiveness, export facilitation and Nigeria’s participation in the African Continental Free Trade Area.

The event also featured recognition for Nigeria at the IPRA Grand Prix. That award went to Image Merchants Promotion Limited, publishers of PRNigeria and Economic Confidential, for a campaign on using artificial intelligence in crisis communication. The campaign followed research into misinformation, deepfakes and digital information disorder.

IPRA President Esther Cobbah said the Athens event also marked the association’s return to the city where its public-relations code of conduct was developed 60 years ago.