Adewale Bashir Adeniyi

The Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), CG Bashir Adeniyi will deliver the 7th convocation lecture of the Nigerian Institute of Journalism (NIJ) on Monday, May 5, 2025 in Lagos.

CG Adeniyi, a former Vice President and Council member of the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR) will deliver the convocation lecture themed: “AI and Public Governance”.

The lecture will take place at the Sir Kesington Adebukunola Adebutu Media Resource Centre.

The convocation lecture will precede the convocation proper on Tuesday, May 6, 2025 where 707 graduands will convoke at the seventh academic ceremonies to be led by Aremo Olusegun Osoba who chairs the Governing Council of the Institution.

At the convocation, about 707 graduates from the 2022 to 2024 academic sessions will be honoured with Distinctions, Upper Credit, Lower Credit and Pass certificates.

In all, 60 graduands earned the Distinction grade. The graduates are in categories of National Diploma (ND), Higher National Diploma (HND), and Post-Graduate Diploma (PGD)

The NIJ was reformatted in 2004 to have its admission moderated by the Joint Admissions and Matriculation Board (JAMB), the curriculum moderated by the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE) and its graduates participate in the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) programme.

At the press conference ahead of the convocation ceremony on Wednesday, April 30, the Provost of the institution, Gbenga Adefaye appealed to the federal government to consider students of private tertiary institutions as beneficiaries in the current Student’s Loan Scheme.

Adefaye was of the view that enrolment in post-secondary school education will increase in the country if government permits other students aside public tertiary institutions to benefit from the scheme operated by NELFUND.

According to him, the biggest challenge facing the institution is funding, adding however that it is not peculiar to NIJ, stressing the need for government and wealthy individuals to prioritize support for the sector.

On the reason behind the convocation lecture topic, Adefaye said that it was for public and national importance since the ICT and Artificial Intelligence affect our public lives.

The customs boss, according to him, will provide insight in terms of happenings on survival and impacts of technology to their activities, while stressing that it will open the minds of the students to positively maximise the opportunity therein.