Customs to deploy AI data tracking to counter online scam, fake news

By Clement Omanibe, Abuja

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has begun efforts to decimate rampant fake news and online scams that damage the Service’s image by integrating new-age digital data-tracking intelligence tools.

The Comptroller-General of Customs (CGC), Adewale Adeniyi, represented by the National Public Relations Officer of the Service, Deputy Comptroller of Customs Abdullahi Maiwada, disclosed this on Friday, at the just-concluded NECCIPR Roundtable ’26 Edition held in Lagos, with the Theme: Algorithm Influence & Public Relations.

Adeniyi explained that as a communicator, it was important to ensure the general public understood and accepted reasons officers carried out their duties.

“The role of AI cannot be over emphasized especially within our operations. Over the years AI has been deployed in our core operational duties as well as strategic communication. AI has also been deployed to aid risk management, which involves assessment of the risks in imported items so that they can be categorised according to their different levels of risk to enable appropriate customs interventions,” he said.

Adeniyi also explained that artificial intelligence could also analyse sentiment and understand how people perceived Customs activities.

He added that the Service was using every available platform to establish facts while working with other agencies to arrest those behind misleading information.

Earlier, the convener of the Neccipr Roundtable ’26, Nkechi Ali-Balogun, said the programme began with a simple conviction: public relations professionals must not only manage messages but also lead national discourse.

“This year, we confront a question that touches every one of us. When machines decide what we see, who is really shaping the Nigerian mind? Who now controls the flow of information that shapes what Nigerians believe? We live in a rapidly changing world, powered by AI, where a single algorithm can shape political narratives, throw out conspiracy theories, and dictate what millions read, believe, and share,” she said.

The President and Chairman of the Governing Council, the Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR), Ike Neliaku, and former Federal Minister of Education, Obiageli Ezekwesili, presented keynote addresses among other invited dignitaries, showing professional readiness to sustain the standard of credible information.