By Chesa Chesa
The Comptroller-General of Nigeria Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, has made a bold and innovative move by positioning the private sector as the focus during the upcoming Customs-Partnership for African Cooperation in Trade (C-PACT) Conference, being hosted in Abuja as a transformative moment for the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Scheduled for November 17–19, 2025, the confab is bringing together African customs chiefs, private-sector leaders, and policymakers in a forum deliberately engineered to confront the operational realities inhibiting intra-African trade.
C-PACT reflects a Nigeria-led push to anchor AfCFTA in everyday business reality, with the strong backing of the AfCFTA Secretariat, Afreximbank, and the World Customs Organization—which Adeniyi currently chairs.
Early response has been strong: nearly 30 African customs administrations have registered, including 22 at the Director-General level.
During a pre-event briefing at the State House on Friday, Adeniyi explained that his C-PACT initiative breaks from tradition by placing the private sector’s daily struggles at its core because logistics operators, manufacturers, and service providers continue to battle non-tariff barriers that restrict the free movement of goods—a structural flaw AfCFTA cannot afford.
He stressed that Customs administrations must shift from passive gatekeepers to active drivers of trade facilitation, noting that “when you see the policy trust documents, you will see specific policies that speak towards the promotion of trade or Nigeria re-establishing itself as a trade partner.”
With his tenure recently renewed, Adeniyi emphasized that such policies must translate into concrete relief for economic operators moving goods across borders.
According to him: “Some particular KPIs were specifically mentioned by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. One of them is the implementation of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement,” which indicates the administration’s intent to use trade as a lever for development and poverty reduction.
He further pointed out that to unlock Africa’s potential, various Customs services must lead the way in simplifying and accelerating cross-border commerce.”
Adeniyi also addressed the practical challenges of implementation, observing that effective free-trade regimes demand the ability to enforce rules of origin, administer trade preferences, and phase out duties—a task made harder by uneven progress across regions, even as he warned that such inconsistencies erode private-sector confidence and stall continental integration.
Beyond technical issues, he highlighted deeper obstacles: capacity constraints and political hesitation.
“It requires capacity building. It requires a very strong political will on the side of the various countries to implement the trade agreement,” he said, noting that duty suspension must steadily progress toward zero for AfCFTA to deliver real value.
Adeniyi’s C-PACT framework aims to unify customs leaders, private-sector representatives, and policymakers in a results-driven platform capable of coordinating duty suspension, harmonizing procedures, and prioritizing the concerns of real economic actors.
“Governments don’t trade. Customs don’t trade. The banks will not trade, but it is the economic operators that will trade. And they are the ones this instrument of free trade is designed for”, he stated.
By foregrounding private-sector frustrations—documentation delays, procedural inconsistencies, and the non-tariff barriers that inflate logistics costs—the C-PACT Conference seeks to convert high-level commitments into faster clearance, smoother border processes, and predictable trade flows.
Adeniyi also linked improved trade facilitation to broader national priorities, including security and regional economic integration. He cited Customs’ recent performance—70% revenue growth in 2023 and 101% in 2024—as evidence that reform can drive both prosperity and stability. Duty-free access to African-made goods, he added, could further lower production costs, expand markets, and spur domestic manufacturing.
