The Nigeria Customs Service has announced plans to reduce cargo clearance time to 48 hours and also eliminate redundant checks, expedite dispute resolution within the nation’s seaports and land borders, with the unveiling of a One-Stop-Shop initiative.
Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, announced this in Lagos at the official launch of the OSS at the weekend.
Adeniyi, who was represented by the Deputy Controller of Customs in charge of Enforcement, Timi Bomodi, explained that the One-Stop-Shop initiative is firmly anchored in Nigeria’s broader business environment reforms under Executive Order 001 and the Business Facilitation Act, which emphasise transparency, service timelines, digitisation, and inter-agency coordination.
The One-Stop-Shop is designed as a unified operational framework that centralises all risk interventions within a coordinated digital and physical environment, replacing fragmented processes with an integrated clearance system. The platform brings together valuation, Customs Processing Centres, intelligence, enforcement, compliance monitoring, and gate operations into a single workflow, supported by digital tracking and clearly defined escalation paths.
According to him, the One-Stop-Shop initiative pursues clear and measurable operational and economic outcomes: “It reduces clearance time by eliminating duplicated reviews and sequential inspections, supporting a 48-hour clearance target and improving significantly on historical dwell times.”
