DCG BU Nwafor, a highly respected officer from Anambra State, stood as the next in line to succeed the current Controller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi. Her record is exemplary, her service unblemished, and her rise through the ranks marked by diligence, discipline, and distinction.
Loading ...However, in a deeply disappointing turn of events, DCG Nwafor has now been denied this well-deserved elevation following the recent one-year tenure extension granted to CG Adeniyi just days ago. Her retirement looms in October 2026, and with this maneuver, the door has been quietly but deliberately shut on her legitimate opportunity to lead.
Instead, DCG KI Adeola is now positioned as next in line after Nwafor’s retirement. A succession plan that feels less like meritocracy and more like a calculated bypass of justice.
This is not how to heal a nation. This is not how to build trust in the aftermath of the Buhari years, which many Nigerians rightly recall as a season of division, selective appointments, and wounded national spirit. This is not how to ensure respect and acceptance for my Yoruba ethnic nationality.
As Thomas Paine once warned: “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right.”
The civil war ended nearly sixty years ago, yet the ghost of that conflict still haunts our institutions. The continued marginalization of the South East this time embodied in the denial of an Igbo woman’s rise in the Customs hierarchy, sends a dangerous message to millions who still believe in equity, unity and national inclusion.
Sadly, many Igbos within the APC have chosen silence, even complicity, when it comes to injustice cloaked in procedure.
How can a nation truly move forward when merit is sacrificed at the altar of politics and ethnic manipulation?
DCG BU Nwafor deserved better. Nigeria deserves better.
True unity requires more than rhetoric. It demands action fairness, representation, and the courage to do what is right, even when it’s politically inconvenient.
Let history remember this moment. Not as another quiet betrayal, but as a call to conscience.
Jimoh Olusegun
Ilesha
