By Sandra Chukwunyere
The Nigerian Revenue Service (NRS), the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), and the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on Tuesday conducted an assessment visit to the National Single Window (NSW) office in Apapa, Lagos, to evaluate progress, identify challenges, and chart a path forward for the newly launched trade facilitation platform.
NRS Chairman Dr. Zacch Adedeji acknowledged President Bola Tinubu’s role in finally bringing the long-elusive project to fruition after multiple failed attempts of the past.
While reacting to concerns about teething problems raised by stakeholders, Dr Adedeji assured that the government would cushion the financial impact on traders grappling with initial operational difficulties.
“This is a special period. We will engage terminal operators and relevant stakeholders to ensure that demurrage charges are waived on affected containers,” Adedeji assured.
He attributed some of the delays to the complexities of migrating data from the old system, noting that not all transactions had been affected.
“When you have people that have delay, it is a certain percentage of the overall, some are smooth. The reason for that is migration from the old system. Imagine when you have the master manifest, you’ve shipped one in the old system and the other one is here,” he explained.
Adedeji also expressed appreciation for the broad acceptance the platform has received across the trade community. “I thank Nigerians, because the success is just the adoption. If you look at it, you’ve not seen anyone say, no, this is not what we want to do, or this is what we want to do. So we thank Nigeria, we thank Mr. President,” he said.
On the teething challenges that have accompanied the rollout, Adedeji urged stakeholders not to lose heart. “When you have a project of this magnitude, definitely you experience hitches. But if you look at where we’re coming from, there cannot be demoralizing. Instead of submitting cargo documents in 10 to 15 places, stakeholders are now submitting in one place. And even if you have delay, it is far, far less than going to seven places,” he said.
Comptroller-General of Customs Bashir Adewale Adeniyi described the visit as a working review of the system’s performance since launch and reaffirmed the service’s commitment to seeing it succeed.
“We are here to see what progress we’ve recorded, what challenges there have been, and what do we do moving forward to ensure that we get over those challenges,” he said.
Adeniyi was unequivocal about the long-term significance of the platform, saying that “National Single Window is here to stay. It will revolutionise the trading environment for good. It will definitely deliver benefits to the Nigerian economy, to make our trade environment more competitive. It will increase trade facilitation, no doubt about that. Of course, it will impact our economy,”
He acknowledged that glitches were to be expected with a deployment of such scale, adding that the team had been proactively addressing them.
“We’ve been experiencing those glitches, and we’ve been working together as a team under the National Single Window to confront those challenges and to ensure that we get over them and we move on. Initially, we had issues with uploading manifests from DHL. We got over that. We had issues with the shipping company. We got over that. Training is going on. There has been stakeholder acceptance, buy-in by all of them. You could see here that they are also undergoing those training programs,” he said.
Drawing on the experience with the Customs B’Odogwu platform, Adeniyi expressed confidence that the NSW team would overcome its current challenges faster, noting that similar complaints raised at the time of the B’Odogwu launch had since been put to rest.
PEBEC Director-General Zahrah Mustapha Audu framed the NSW within the broader ease-of-doing-business agenda, describing it as a welcome solution for businesses engaged in import and export trade.
She acknowledged that software-related teething problems were inevitable but argued that the direction of travel was clearly positive.
“Yes, we will have teething problems because it’s a software, but something that is noteworthy is the fact that technology is constantly evolving. So as such, it’s good for us to get on board and to move with the trends. I see this as definitely progress for Nigeria,” she said.
Audu was optimistic about the prospect of achieving the administration’s cargo dwell time target. “We started 2026 with the vision of reducing cargo dwell time to less than seven days. At this point, I’m becoming very optimistic because we’re in April. The system has been deployed. So hopefully, maybe we can even reduce it to three to four days, who knows, with the right political will, with the right determination, as well as cooperation from all the sister agencies who are involved in this process,” she said.
She pledged PEBEC’s continued collaboration with businesses across all sectors to ensure that government policies deliver tangible results, and congratulated the NSW team on the progress recorded so far.
