Five months after its launch, Nigeria’s National Single Window trade portal is at the center of a growing dispute between the freight forwarding industry and the government agencies overseeing it, with one side insisting the system is failing to deliver on its core promise and the other pointing to early, measurable gains.
The NSW was introduced in March as a centralized digital platform designed to let importers and exporters submit trade documents once, rather than navigating duplicate paperwork across multiple government agencies, a longstanding source of delay at Nigerian ports. But according to Lucky Amiwero, President of the National Council of Managing Directors of Licensed Customs Agents, the system is falling well short of that vision. “Instead of a single window, what we have are multiple windows that are complicating the process for importers and clearing agents,” he told Vanguard, arguing the platform has failed to genuinely simplify documentation or cargo clearance.
Amiwero’s central recommendation is a change in who runs the show. He argues implementation should be handed entirely to the Nigeria Customs Service, which he says already holds the legal mandate, operational infrastructure, and technical expertise needed under the Customs Act. He was particularly critical of plans to transmit cargo manifests electronically outside the Customs framework, insisting manifest administration is a statutory Customs responsibility that shouldn’t be delegated elsewhere. He also pushed back on claims that the project has already advanced into a second phase, maintaining that problems identified during the initial rollout remain unresolved, and warned that ongoing clearance delays continue to drive up demurrage and other port costs shouldered by importers.
Customs, however, tells a very different story. The agency maintains the NSW platform has meaningfully improved trade facilitation, clearing efficiency, and Nigeria’s overall competitiveness in international trade. In fact, rather than pausing to address the concerns raised by freight forwarders, Customs has moved forward with stakeholder sensitisation sessions on electronic vessel manifest submission as part of what it describes as the platform’s next implementation phase. Deputy Comptroller-General for ICT/Modernisation Oluyomi Adebakin said the sessions build on consultations held both before and after the NSW’s Phase One launch on March 27, framing the platform as a globally recognized trade facilitation tool. “Since the introduction of the National Single Window, the country has begun to experience its benefits. Nigeria’s standing in international trade is improving,” she said, adding that electronic manifest submission wouldn’t change Customs’ statutory responsibilities but would simply make document processing faster and more transparent, while also strengthening anti-smuggling efforts.
National Coordinator of the National Single Window Project Tola Fakolade offered figures to back up that optimism, crediting Customs’ support for the initiative’s progress and reporting that the platform has already issued more than 100,000 licences and permits while registering over 1,000 users, numbers he described as a significant milestone in the country’s broader trade modernisation push.
