FG Set to Issue New SOP to Streamline Joint Cargo Inspections, Target 3-Day Dwell Time at Ports
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) have announced the imminent release of a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to improve joint inspections at Nigerian ports, as part of a broader push to drive cargo dwell time down to as low as three days.
The announcement came on Tuesday during a joint assessment visit to the National Single Window (NSW) office in Apapa, Lagos, where officials from the NCS, PEBEC, and the Nigerian Revenue Service (NRS) gathered to review progress on the newly launched trade facilitation platform and map out next steps.
Comptroller-General of Customs Bashir Adewale Adeniyi signalled that the SOP would be a game-changer for port operations, addressing one of the most persistent bottlenecks in the cargo clearance chain.
“There are a lot of other activities going on. We just came in from a workshop with PEBEC, to see how we can improve the joint inspection environment. Very soon we are going to be rolling out an SOP that would help us to really address the challenges that are associated with joint inspection, more deployment of scanners, reducing containers that are going to be for inspections and things like that,” he said.
PEBEC Director-General Zahrah Mustapha Audu corroborated this, noting that the legwork behind the scenes was as important as the technology being deployed.
“I think it’s also worthy to note that besides the technology, we’re also doing the legwork. We’re making sure that all the different agencies are ready. Customs, as lead agency for trade facilitation, in fact, we just came from a workshop which is ongoing around improving the day-to-day activities within the ports ecosystem as it regards customs taking lead on joint inspections, something that we’re hoping to fully deploy again this year, in addition to what is going on with the software that has been deployed.
“For me, I think this is very promising for Nigeria, and I would advise people to continue to invest in Nigeria. This is definitely the time,” she said.
Audu’s optimism extended to the administration’s cargo dwell time targets, with the PEBEC DG raising the prospect of pushing well beyond the original goal.
“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.
The SOP and the dwell time ambition sit within a wider reform architecture anchored on the National Single Window, which went live recently.
