The Federal Government has concluded plans to roll out phase one of the National Single Window on March 27, 2026, The PUNCH reports.
The National Public Relations Officer of the Nigeria Customs Service, Abdullahi Maiwada, a Deputy Controller of Customs, disclosed this in a telephone conversation with our correspondent on Wednesday.
“The launch of phase one will kick off on the 27th of this month,” Maiwada confirmed.
In a recent video seen by The PUNCH, the Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, explained that the NSW will help efficiently manage the seamless relationship and coordination between all stakeholders involved in delivering goods from one point to another, most often across borders.
“The first thing for us all is to have a common understanding that the ultimate beneficiary of the NSW Project is Nigeria and the Nigerian economy, Nigeria and the Nigerian people. So we need to do things differently; we need to get things out of the ports in a faster way.
“We need to get it done in a more secure way; we need to get regulatory environments sanitised so that it takes less time to do all of these things that are necessary for our security. It is a game-changer that we must all support with everything that we have in terms of our processes, legislation, and procedures to ensure that we all arrive at that common objective,” he said.
The NSW is a flagship Federal Government initiative aimed at digitising and unifying Nigeria’s trade processes. It was formally commissioned by President Bola Tinubu on April 16, 2024, to transform how cross-border trade documentation is submitted, processed, and approved.
The President also directed that the NSW platform be fully operational by the first quarter of 2026, a target reinforced across multiple government meetings and official directives.
Speaking on how prepared agents are for the deployment of the NSW, a chieftain of the National Association of Government Approved Freight Forwarders, Mr Nnadi Ugochukwu, stated that, irrespective of the level of preparedness, it is a government project that must be implemented.
“Whether we are prepared or not, it is a government project and must be implemented. It is a step in the right direction if properly implemented as planned,” Ugochukwu said.
