Customs set to jettison manual examination of cargoes for PCA

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) is shifting its focus from extensive physical inspection of consignments at the ports to Post Clearance Audits (PCA) as part of efforts to improve trade facilitation, strengthen compliance and boost revenue assurance.

This was disclosed on Thursday by the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, at a Post Clearance Audit (PCA) sensitisation programme for stakeholders in Lagos, stressing that the Service could not continue to rely on the physical examination of every consignment if it must simultaneously facilitate trade and meet its growing revenue obligations.

According to the Customs CG, the NCS collected N7.281 trillion in 2025 against a target of N6.584 trillion, exceeding the target by N697 billion and representing a 19 per cent increase from the N6.1 trillion collected in 2024.

He said the revenue target for 2026 had risen to N11.074 trillion, with N4.30 trillion already collected as of the end of June.

Adeniyi said the figures underscored the need for Customs to adopt smarter methods of revenue assurance rather than increasing physical intervention at the ports.

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“These figures make a point when the methods that must be applied are not celebrated alone. 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 Comptroller-General said post-clearance audits would enable Customs to verify traders’ compliance records after goods had been released, thereby reducing unnecessary delays and allowing officers to concentrate resources on high-risk and non-compliant traders.

He said the approach had become even more important following the findings of a time-release study conducted at Tin Can Island Port.

The study, which tracked 601 import declarations from arrival to physical exit, found that containers spent about five days in the port before leaving, while the physical examination itself took only a matter of hours.

Adeniyi said that for 98.7 per cent of the consignments studied, the period between booking for examination and physical exit averaged close to four days.

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

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

According to him, the findings demonstrated that the solution to port delays was not simply to deploy more examination officers but to reduce the number of consignments that require physical intervention in the first place.

“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,” Adeniyi said.

He noted that PCA was not a Nigerian innovation but an internationally recognised customs control mechanism provided for under the Revised Kyoto Convention and the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.

Adeniyi also linked PCA to the Service’s Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme, saying credible audits were necessary to identify businesses with proven compliance records that could be given greater facilitation.

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

He said the average clearance time for AEO companies had dropped from about 156 hours to 43 hours, while Huawei had consistently recorded an average clearance time of about eight hours across the ports because of the quality of its documentation and compliance.

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, Adeniyi said.

He urged more businesses to work towards attaining AEO status, describing compliance as an advantage rather than a cost of doing business.

“If, for example, we are able to generate 80 per cent of our revenue from AEO companies, the rest 20 per cent… it means our resources will be concentrated on those few ones,” he said.

Adeniyi further assured stakeholders that the Service would continue to review its processes, including the procedure for appeals, while encouraging businesses to make voluntary disclosures and promptly correct errors.

He said Customs was moving from a culture of intervention to one where compliance would be driven by understanding, trust and cooperation.

“Compliance should not be driven by fear of enforcement. It should be driven by confidence in a system that is fair, that is predictable, and consistently applied,” he said.

The Comptroller-General said the success of PCA would not be measured only by the revenue recovered from audits, but also by the number of businesses that voluntarily comply with their obligations, the reduction in unnecessary interventions and the level of confidence traders have in the customs system.

Earlier, the Assistant Comptroller-General of Customs in charge of Post-Clearance Audit, Babatunde Olomu, disclosed that PCA operations recovered N27.2 billion between August 2025 and August 2026, compared with N21.3 billion during the corresponding period.

He said the figure represented a 27.7 per cent year-on-year increase, attributing the growth to improved risk-based targeting, stronger auditing processes, enhanced case management and improved stakeholder compliance.