Get Guardian on GoogleThe Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, has disclosed plans by Nigeria to pilot a joint digital customs system with Benin and Cameroon which will allow traders declare goods once instead of repeating the process on both sides of a border.
Adeniyi disclosed this during an engagement with a delegation led by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) commissioner for Economic Affairs and Agriculture, Dehpue Y. Zuo, who oversees the presidential mandate on ECOWAS free movement and trade integration.
He said the system is built in such a way that a declaration cleared by Nigeria Customs automatically becomes the receiving country’s manifest. The receiving administration can then apply its own controls without repeating the process. “Submission once, declaration once, processing once,” he added.
The Customs boss explained that AI-based translation converts declarations between English and French, so Nigerian and francophone customs officers each work in their own language. The pilot began after Adeniyi led a high delegation from Benin and Cameroon for a benchmarking mission to Beitbridge Border between South Africa and Zimbabwe. He said the facilities he saw had world-class logistics but were “one-stop only on paper.” Technology, he said, was the missing link, and the main lesson was that “borders do not make economies grow.”
He said he often visits border posts himself, sometimes in civilian clothes, to see conditions first-hand. According to him, about 60 per cent of trade within the sub-region passes through one key corridor, so getting that post right would show the model works across West Africa.
Commissioner Zuo said the ECOWAS Commission leadership had agreed to support priority areas for free movement. These include a joint border post at Seme-Krake on the Nigeria-Benin border, where he proposed a meeting of both countries’ customs and border agencies. He said a baseline survey of checkpoints in member states is also planned. Security-driven checkpoints can stay, he argued.
If they are made systematic and digital. He also pledged work on harmonising rules of origin and removing non-tariff barriers.
Zuo said intra-ECOWAS trade stands at about 30 per cent and must reach 40.per cent. He stressed that Nigeria, as the region’s largest economy and market, has to lead that effort. Adeniyi said the Customs Service runs an annual forum for traders and private-sector operators. Nigeria hosted the first edition in November, with Afreximbank and the AfCFTA Secretariat as partners. Both have asked Nigeria to host the second edition, with the opening ceremony set for 8 December 2026.
