Stakeholders in South-South, South-East Pledge Support for National Single Window Project, Commit to Compliance
The Federal Government’s National Single Window (NSW) Project has received overwhelming endorsement from stakeholders across the South-South and South-East regions, including importers, exporters, freight forwarders, licensed customs agents, and manufacturers.
At a major stakeholders’ meeting held on Wednesday in Port Harcourt, Rivers State—jointly organized by the NSW Project Office, the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS), and the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN)—participants expressed confidence in the initiative’s potential to enhance the benefits of legitimate trade.
Speaking on behalf of his association, Chief Emenike Nwokeoji, National President of the Association of Nigeria Licensed Customs Agents (ANLCA), commended President Bola Tinubu for taking decisive steps to implement the NSW, noting that previous administrations had attempted unsuccessfully to do so. He emphasized that Nigeria must embrace innovation, transparency, and process simplification to remain competitive in the global trade arena.
Several speakers at the event described the project as long overdue and praised the NSW Implementation Office for its continuous stakeholder engagement and enlightenment efforts, particularly its outreach to the regions to address questions about the project’s economic and security impact.
NSW Project Director, Tola Fakolade, highlighted the initiative as a cornerstone of President Tinubu’s economic agenda aimed at positioning Nigeria to achieve a $1 trillion economy by 2030, in alignment with global growth projections. He explained that the NSW will serve as a unified digital platform integrating all trade-related processes and agencies into a single access point.
Fakolade noted that the system is designed to foster transparency, collaboration, and interoperability among all actors in the trade value chain, ensuring no stakeholder operates in isolation. He lauded the Nigeria Customs Service, Central Bank of Nigeria, and other institutions for their pioneering efforts in trade digitization and reaffirmed the Federal Government’s full commitment to the project’s deployment to make Nigeria a preferred business hub.
In his keynote address, CRFFN Registrar Kingsley Igwe urged prospective users to remain committed as the project office prepares onboarding and training sessions to familiarize them with the system’s operations.
Representing the Comptroller-General of Customs, ACG Mohammed Kamal, Zonal Coordinator for Zone C, encouraged customs agents and other stakeholders to fully adopt the NSW platform, stressing its advantages such as faster cargo clearance, reduced delays, and the elimination of bottlenecks caused by multiple agency procedures.
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