The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) is set to reduce physical examination of cargoes at the ports and rely more on Post-Clearance Audits (PCA) to speed up cargo clearance, improve trade facilitation and strengthen revenue assurance.

The Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, disclosed this on Thursday in Lagos at a PCA sensitisation programme for stakeholders, saying the Service could not continue to depend on extensive physical inspection while striving to facilitate trade and meet rising revenue targets.

Daily Trust reports that Customs collected N7.281 trillion in 2025 against a target of N6.584 trillion, exceeding the target by N697 billion.

The figure was also 19 per cent higher than the N6.1 trillion collected in 2024.

Adeniyi said the Service’s 2026 revenue target had risen to N11.074 trillion, with N4.30 trillion collected as of June.

He said meeting the target required smarter revenue-assurance mechanisms rather than opening more containers.

“Numbers of that order cannot be delivered by opening more containers. They can only be delivered by knowing which of those containers that we must open,” he said.

The Customs chief said a time-release study at Tin Can Island Port involving 601 import declarations showed that containers spent about five days in the port before exiting, although physical examination took only a few hours.

He said 98.7 per cent of the consignments studied spent an average of almost four days between being booked for examination and physically exiting the port.

Adeniyi attributed the delays to manual processes, fragmented coordination among agencies and waiting time within the clearance system.

“The delay is in the architecture. It’s not in the inspection itself,” he said.

According to him, PCA would enable Customs to verify traders’ records after cargoes had been released, reducing unnecessary physical interventions and allowing officers to concentrate on high-risk and non-compliant businesses.

“The answer is to reduce the number of consignments that need to be stopped at all by verifying afterwards those that do not require stopping now. That is post-clearance audits,” he said.

Adeniyi said PCA was an internationally recognised customs-control mechanism under the Revised Kyoto Convention and the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.

He also linked the strategy to the Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme, saying credible audits would help identify compliant businesses eligible for greater trade facilitation.

He disclosed that 247 companies had been admitted into the AEO programme, with 15 making voluntary disclosures involving more than N1 billion in revenue.

The average clearance time for AEO companies, he said, had dropped from about 156 hours to 43 hours, while Huawei had recorded an average clearance time of about eight hours across the ports.

The 247 AEO companies collectively generated more than N3 trillion in Customs revenue in 2025, accounting for about 43 per cent of the Service’s total revenue.

Meanwhile, the Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs in charge of PCA, Babatunde Olomu, said PCA operations recovered N27.2 billion between August 2025 and August 2026, up from N21.3 billion in the corresponding period.

He said the recovery represented a 27.7 per cent year-on-year increase, driven by improved risk-based targeting, stronger auditing processes and better stakeholder compliance.

Adeniyi said Customs would continue to review its procedures while encouraging businesses to make voluntary disclosures and correct errors.

He said the success of PCA would be measured not only by revenue recovered, but also by increased voluntary compliance, fewer unnecessary interventions and greater confidence in the Customs system. (Daily Trust)