By its simple design, a ‘Single Window’ platform links individual seaports and all supply chain actors in a loop offering firsthand information on cargoes. This unique platform automates data and knowledge real-time sharing and allows better interaction management within the network.
The proposed Nigeria Single Window Trade Portal is a cross-government website that is expected to open a new era for trade facilitation by offering a single portal for trade actors, both Nigerian and international, to access a full range of resources and standardized services from different Nigerian government agencies.
It is akin to an open electronic platform that connects individual existing systems and databases of distinct companies and organizations. It enables a secure and intelligent operational data exchange and consolidation within the port network.
Clearly, the port community involves public and private sector players. In this divide are users of port services, namely: shipping lines, shipping agents, freight forwarders and other logistics specialists, other transport services providers and their respective teams, inland terminal operators, warehouses managers, shippers, and cargo owners, all of who operate in the long chain. These players send information on cargo destined for the ports; in this case Nigeria ports.
The Single Window also entails that shipping lines’ e-booking of containers or space for general and bulk cargo, monitoring of physical movements of containers or goods, e-manifest data submission, release of carrier Delivery Order and tracking of cargo status for importers or check ocean vessel schedules for exporters
For the agencies operating the port system, the arrangement entails e-settlement of all bills: handling costs, logistics fees, demurrage charges, and seamless release of Terminal Delivery Order.
For many years, Nigerian maritime industry stakeholders have called for Single Window as a platform for government agencies to interface on matters regarding importation. This has however remained a dream.
Even though their prayers for a Single Window remained unanswered, at a point, some players started calling for a Port Community System (PCS). There is little or no difference between the two. It is just a matter of details and reach.
A significant revenue is lost annually as a result of lack of a Single Window System in the nation’s maritime sector. Some sources have put the losses at much higher than N100Billion. Yet the National Single Window has remained elusive due to inter-agency rivalry and protectionism.
In the absence of this unifying platform, importers and clearing agents are forced to contend with challenges in the cargo delivery chain, a development which causes staggering demurrage costs and inconveniences. Sadly also, government agencies directly involved in the cargo reception, handling, clearance and delivery carry out their statutory duties rather blindly, resulting into loss of revenue and influx of unwholesome goods into the country.
We recall that, in 2019, the Federal Government gave approval for the setting up of the Steering Committee to be chaired by the vice president for the design and implementation of a National Single Window.
While justifying it, the government said the single window will enable better efficiency of port operations and also increase government revenue.
And after many years of paying lip service, Federal Government agencies under the auspices of the then- Federal Ministry of Transportation came out in 2022 to give their support to the establishment a National Single Window regime.
Since then, there has been no action by these agencies to collectively activate this desire. Rather, they have been pursuing individual agenda towards their own system of profiling cargoes arriving at Nigerian seaports.
Surprisingly, some of these agencies have created separate platforms and given them different names, but serving the same purpose of profiling and keeping tab on imports. This is even as the industry yearns for a better way of doing things.
There was a time the Nigeria Customs Service, NIMASA, NPA and Shippers Council were in competition over the Single Window; striving to warehouse it. This division and protectionism denied the nation’s economy of the desired benefit.
On all sides of the divides, are personnel of government agencies who receive information pertaining to cargoes. They are employees of the state actors identified above.
The collectivity of these players are those who the Single Window is expected to connect and, in the process, engender a tidier and more business-friendly port and cargo delivery system, where players are traceable and are made to account for their actions or infractions.
It is sad that, at the moment the cargo importation and clearance procedure in Nigeria is lacking coordination.
The hope that Nigeria would soon have Single Window platform was actually rekindled in April 2024 by President Bola Tinubu, which the inauguration of a Committee. The full roll out has been fixed for the first quarter of 2026.
Even though the driver is the Minister of Finance and the Coordinating Minister of the nation’s economy; Mr Olawale Edun, there is a Team Lead, which is Mr Tola Fakolade. Similarly, the committee’s membership is drawn from all relevant agencies of government, whose Chief Executives are equally members of the high- level committee. There are others who also represent institutions relevant to the project.
We recall that at a recent forum on the National Single Window, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy; Mr Adegboyega Oyetola, projected that annual $3bn was accruable to the Federal Government from the National Single Window.
Harping on the numerous advantages of the NSW, Oyetola had said: “This system is strategically positioned to enhance transparency by reducing redundancies in the trade process, which will allow for the elimination of revenue leakages, an amount estimated to exceed $3bn annually, and address supply chain disruptions that affect over 70 per cent of logistics companies in Nigeria”.
Each time we think of the huge benefits accruable to a port system that is governed by orderliness, transparency and accountability, we think of the much-touted ease of doing business. A unified system of profiling and interconnectivity which the Single Window represents, is the answer
There is no doubt that the Nigerian port system is riddled with unwholesome practices being perpetrated by state and non-state actors, and the only way all these infractions can be eliminated is by adopting a unified system, which will out an end to the empires of corruption that the various stakeholders have built around themselves.
