…FG To Waive Demurrage Charges Associated With NSW Migration
The Nigerian Revenue Service (NRS), Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) on Tuesday met for the purposes of ensuring that the implementation of the recently unveiled National Single Window (NSW) trade platform achieves the desired results for the Nigeria’s sustainable economic development.
The discussions were held when the Chairman of the NRS, Dr. Zacch Adedeji; Comptroller-General of the NCS, Dr Bashir Adewale Adeniyi; and Director-General of the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), Zahrah Audu led a high-powered delegation to the NSW Implementation Office in Apapa, Lagos.
During the visit, the delegates conducted an assessment and evaluation of the NSW progress, identified its challenges and charted a desirable path for its hitch-free enforcement.
- Advertisement -
Speaking at the forum, Adedeji recalled how the present administration made the creation of the platform after failed attempts in the past two decades, describing the past experiences on the project as normal with every new project.
The tax administrator assured that the government would cushion the financial impact on traders who are grappling with initial operational difficulties.
He explained: “This is a special period. We will engage terminal operators and relevant stakeholders to ensure that demurrage charges are waived on affected containers.
“The reason for the delay is migration from the old system. Imagine when you have the master manifest, you have shipped one in the old system and the other one is here.
“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.
“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”, Adedeji added.
In his remarks, the Comptroller-General of NCS described the visit as a working review of the system’s performance since itslaunch and reaffirmed the service’s commitment to seeing the successful implementation of the NSW platform.
He clarified: “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.
“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,”
“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 programmes”, Adeniyi added.
Recalling the experience with the Customs B’Odogwu platform’s implementation over the past few months, the NCS’ boss expressed optimism 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 addressed.
The PEBEC Director-General identified the NSW platform as part of the government’s broader ease-of-doing-business agenda, describing it as a desirable solution for businesses engaged in merchandize trade.
Audu noted that software-related teething problems were inevitable in pioneer technological platforms but justified the NSW platform in view of its far-reaching benefits to the country and businesses involved in the import-export operations.
She explained: “Yes, we will have teething problems because it is 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.
“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 added
While congratulating the NSW team on the progress recorded so far on the NSW platform operations, Audu assured the PEBEC’s continued collaboration with businesses across all sectors to ensure that the implementation of the platform achieves desired results for the country.
