The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has disclosed that the 247 companies admitted into its Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme collectively generated more than N3 trillion in Customs revenue in 2025, accounting for about 43 per cent of the Service’s total revenue.
Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, disclosed this on Thursday at a Post Clearance Audit (PCA) sensitisation programme for stakeholders in Lagos, stressing that the growing contribution of compliant businesses underscored the need for Customs to move away from widespread physical inspections towards risk-based controls and post-clearance verification.
According to Adeniyi, 247 companies have 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 significantly from about 156 hours to 43 hours, demonstrating the benefits of compliance-based facilitation.
Adeniyi cited Huawei as a notable example, saying the company had consistently recorded an average clearance time of about eight hours across Nigerian ports, largely because of the quality of its documentation and compliance record.
The CCG said the development was consistent with the Service’s broader shift towards Post Clearance Audit, which allows Customs to verify traders’ compliance after goods have been released instead of physically examining every consignment at the port.
He explained that the approach would enable Customs to concentrate its resources on high-risk and non-compliant traders while allowing compliant businesses to enjoy faster clearance.
Adeniyi said Customs could no longer depend on physical examination of every consignment if it must simultaneously facilitate trade and meet its rising revenue obligations.
He disclosed that the NCS collected N7.281 trillion in 2025, exceeding its N6.584 trillion target by N697 billion and representing a 19 per cent increase over the N6.1 trillion collected in 2024.
For 2026, the Service has a revenue target of N11.074 trillion, with N4.30 trillion already collected as of the end of June.
He said the figures made it imperative for Customs to adopt smarter revenue-assurance mechanisms rather than increasing physical interventions at the ports.
“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 Customs boss said the need for such reform was reinforced by a time-release study conducted at Tin Can Island Port, which tracked 601 import declarations from arrival to physical exit.
According to him, containers spent about five days in the port before leaving, although physical examination itself took only a few hours.
He said that in 98.7 per cent of the consignments studied, the period between booking for examination and physical exit averaged close to four days.
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.
He explained that reducing the number of consignments subjected to physical intervention would help address congestion and improve trade facilitation.
“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 noted that PCA was an internationally recognised customs control mechanism provided for under the Revised Kyoto Convention and the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.
He said the AEO programme and PCA were closely linked because credible audits enabled Customs to identify businesses with proven compliance records and subsequently provide them with greater facilitation.
“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.
The CCG urged more businesses to pursue AEO status, describing compliance as a competitive advantage rather than a cost of doing business.
He also assured stakeholders that the Service would continue to review its processes, including its appeals procedure, while encouraging businesses to make voluntary disclosures and promptly correct errors.
According to him, Customs is gradually moving from a culture of intervention to one where compliance is 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,” Adeniyi said.
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.
