The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) and the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) have disclosed that a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to improve joint inspections at Nigerian ports will soon be released as part of efforts to reduce cargo dwell time to as low as three days.
The official statement 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 , the Comptroller-General of Customs indicated 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.
Zahrah Mustapha Audu,PEBEC Director-General confirmed that the legwork behind the scenes was as important as the technology being deployed.
“Besides deploying technology, we are ensuring that all relevant agencies are prepared. The Nigeria Customs Service, as the lead agency for trade facilitation, recently held an ongoing workshop focused on improving day-to-day port operations and leading joint inspections. These efforts, along with the recently deployed software, are expected to be fully implemented later this year.”
“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 target are part of a broader reform framework anchored on the recently launched National Single Window.”
