N11.07trn Target: Customs Deploys Post-Clearance Audits To Boost Revenue

The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) has intensified the deployment of Post-Clearance Audit (PCA) as a strategic tool to boost revenue, improve compliance and reduce delays associated with physical examination of consignments at the nation’s ports.

The Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, disclosed this in an engagement with members of the business community, manufacturers, customs licensed agents and other stakeholders in Lagos.

Adeniyi said the strategy had become necessary as the Service seeks to meet its N11.074 trillion revenue target for 2026 while simultaneously reducing the cost and friction associated with international trade.

According to him, the NCS collected N7.281 trillion in 2025 against a target of N6.584 trillion, exceeding the target by N697 billion and representing about 19 per cent growth over the N6.1 trillion collected in 2024.

He said that as of the end of June 2026, the Service had generated N4.30 trillion, with the figure reviewed by the NCS Board at its 65th regular meeting.

Adeniyi said the revenue figures showed that the Service could no longer depend on opening more containers to achieve higher revenue, stressing that Customs must instead identify consignments that require intervention while allowing compliant traders to move their goods faster.

“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 explained that PCA would enable Customs to shift part of its compliance verification from the ports to post-release audits, thereby reducing physical interventions and facilitating legitimate trade.

“There is only one way to do both of those things. Control has to move off the quays or the wharf,” Adeniyi said.

“If every consignment must be opened at the ports before it is released, then revenue assurance and trade facilitation will pull in different directions.”

He said PCA would allow Customs to rely on declarations made by traders while conducting detailed verification of their records after the goods had been released.

“Post-clearance audit is how that contest is resolved. It allows us to move on the strength of the declaration that was made by you and moves the verification to the records after release where it can be done thoroughly and without holding up commerce,” he stated.

Adeniyi said the decision to make PCA a priority was also informed by findings from a Time Release Study conducted at Tin Can Island Port, Lagos.

According to him, the study followed 601 import declarations from arrival to physical exit and involved shipping lines, terminal operators, the Nigerian Ports Authority, licensed agents, banks and other stakeholders.

He said the study showed that a container at Tin Can Island Port spent about five days in the port before exiting, while the physical examination itself took only a matter of hours.

“For 98.7 per cent of the consignments, the interval between booking for examination and the physical exit averaged close to four days,” he said.

Adeniyi said the finding demonstrated that the major challenge was not the speed of Customs examination but delays created by manual processes and fragmented coordination among government agencies.

“It says that examination is fast and clearance is slow, and that the difference between the two is made up of manual processes, fragmented coordination between agencies, and the waiting that this produced,” he stated.

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

He said the implication was that increasing the number of Customs examiners would not, on its own, solve the problem.

“If the problem was slow examination, the answer would have been for us to have more examiners. It is not so, and so the answer is completely different,” Adeniyi said.

According to him, the solution is to reduce the number of consignments stopped at the ports by using PCA to verify the compliance of traders after release.

He added that PCA was not a Nigerian innovation but an internationally recognised customs control mechanism provided for under the Revised Kyoto Convention and Article 7.5 of the World Trade Organisation’s Trade Facilitation Agreement.

Adeniyi said Nigeria’s implementation commitment under the agreement stood at 94.1 per cent on a timetable running until 2029.

He explained that PCA would also feed information obtained from audits back into Customs’ risk-management system, enabling the Service to better identify consignments requiring intervention.

“What the audit finds shapes what the system stops, and every accurate finding makes the system slightly more precise for everybody who trades honestly,” he said.

The Customs boss also linked PCA to the Authorised Economic Operator (AEO) programme, which provides trade facilitation benefits to businesses with proven compliance records.

Adeniyi 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 companies previously recorded an average clearance time of about 156 hours, but that this had fallen to 43 hours since their admission into the programme.

He cited Huawei as a notable example, saying the company had consistently recorded an average clearance time of only eight hours across the ports due to the quality of its documentation and compliance.

The 247 AEO companies, he added, generated more than N3 trillion in revenue for Customs in 2025, representing 43 per cent of the Service’s total revenue for the year.

Adeniyi said expanding the AEO programme would enable Customs to concentrate its enforcement resources on non-compliant traders.

“What this tells us is that as we grow the number of AEO, as more of you meet the requirements for AEO, we’ll be building compliance, and it will mean that we’ll be devoting our resources to non-compliant traders,” he said.

He urged qualified businesses to pursue AEO status, stressing that compliance should be seen as a competitive advantage rather than a cost.

“Compliance is not a cost of doing business in Nigeria. It is an advantage over competitors who do not have it,” Adeniyi said.

The Comptroller-General also assured stakeholders that the Service would continue to review its procedures, particularly areas generating concerns among traders, including the appeals process.

He acknowledged that some stakeholders remained dissatisfied with aspects of the reforms and promised that Customs would continue to engage them.

“I can also feel the fact that not everybody is satisfied with the answers that we have provided,” he said, adding that the Service was prepared to “constantly review the process” guiding appeals.

Adeniyi said the NCS was committed to moving from a culture of intervention to one where compliance becomes the natural outcome of understanding, trust and cooperation.

“Our message today is indeed very simple. 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.

He urged importers and other stakeholders to keep accurate records, make truthful declarations and comply with international trade laws, while assuring businesses that the system would encourage prompt correction and voluntary disclosure where errors occurred.

“For our part, we are moving the service from a culture of intervention to one in which compliance is the natural outcome of understanding, trust and cooperation,” Adeniyi stated.

He added that the success of the PCA programme would not be measured solely by the amount of revenue recovered from audits, but by the number of businesses that voluntarily comply, the reduction in unnecessary interventions and increased confidence in the Customs system.