The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) says automation is the only sustainable route to clearing the mounting backlog of overtime cargoes that, industry players say, occupy terminals across the country’s busiest seaports.
Recall that the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, had met with stakeholders last week at the Apapa Command, where he explained the urgency of adopting automation for overtime cargo clearance. He disclosed that more than half of the complaints reaching his desk daily are linked to overtime cargoes congesting Nigerian ports.
According to him, “Over 50 percent of letters, emails and complaints I receive as CG are about overtime cargo. Some of these disputes end up with the ICPC, EFCC, and even reach the President’s desk. One case has dragged for nearly 15 years, resurfacing with every administration.”
Findings by our correspondent following this decision revealed that there are over 5,000 overtime cargoes littered across various ports in the country, with the bulk of them concentrated in Apapa, Tin Can Island, and Onne ports.
Investigations also showed that many of these cargoes often go missing or remain unaccounted for, with no formal records capturing their disappearance — a situation that has fueled longstanding complaints of opacity and loss within the system.
In a chat with our correspondent, the NCS National Public Relations Officer, Abdullahi Maiwada, confirmed that the absence of a reliable, centralised record is one of the critical reasons behind the push for automation. According to him, it is practically impossible to obtain accurate figures under the current manual process.
“If I tell you I can have that data, it will be very difficult through a one-way manual process. Sincerely speaking, it will be a very difficult task to do. That is the reason we are migrating from a manual process to an automated process. Once we have automation generating the data, it won’t be a problem again,” Maiwada said.
He explained that under the new system, the clearance of overtime cargoes will no longer be left to discretion but will follow a structured approval process: from the Customs Area Controller at 30 days, to the Zonal Coordinator at 60 days, escalating to Headquarters at 90 days, and qualifying for disposal procedures at 120 days in line with the Nigeria Customs Service Act, 2023.
Speaking further, Maiwada noted that automation will strengthen transparency, eliminate manual allocation, and ensure that importers, custodians, and the Service all work with the same data in real time. “This removes the manual form of allocation and disposal we are used to,” he said.
But not everyone is convinced the Service is ready. Former Acting National President of the Association of Nigerian Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), Dr. Kayode Farinto, warned that the automation move could flop, unless Customs first fixes its existing ICT infrastructure.
“Honestly, I think we are putting the cart before the horse. Our present platform, the B’Odogwu, is not seamless. Payments don’t reflect immediately, declarations hang, and sometimes cargoes are stuck for weeks. We saw this happen recently, where cargoes were trapped for three weeks because the system failed. So, before automating overtime cargo, Customs must first perfect B’Odogwu to operate smoothly, like the former NICIS II platform. If not, the automation will fail. Solve the system glitches first before talking about overtime cargo clearance,” he said.
On Adeniyi’s claim that some importers deliberately abandon goods, Farinto insisted such cases are rare. “There may be a few cases like that, especially with multinationals who may still have stock of raw materials. But to generalise is wrong. Give us data, give us evidence, give us statistics. Without that, I won’t accept that importers are deliberately abandoning cargoes,” he added.
