The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC) says it is rolling out fresh reforms to cut cargo clearance time at Nigerian ports to seven days and dismantle illegal checkpoints fuelling extortion along port corridors.
Director-General of PEBEC, Princess Zahrah Mustapha Audu, disclosed this on Tuesday at a State House “Meet the Press” briefing in Abuja, where she outlined the council’s progress since January 2025.
Audu said the average cargo dwell time at ports, currently about 21 days, was making Nigeria uncompetitive against neighbours like Ghana and the Republic of Benin, and that a committee set up in the Office of the Vice President had been tasked with bringing it down to seven.
“We have been tasked to reduce that to seven days,” she said.
According to her, the council is pursuing this through joint agency inspections at berth, a shift from physical cargo checks to scanner-based inspections, and the rollout of the National Single Window to unify documentation across agencies.
On extortion, Audu said the Nigerian Ports Authority and PEBEC had mapped legitimate checkpoints around the Apapa and Tin Can Island corridors and begun installing QR-coded signs that let truckers and freight operators report harassment with evidence.
She said officials found culpable would be prosecuted in collaboration with the Office of the Attorney-General of the Federation, with quarterly monitoring to follow.
Audu added that illegal checkpoints earlier removed from the Apapa and Tin Can corridor had not returned, following repeated PEBEC visits in January, March and July.
“We no longer have illegal checkpoints within the ports corridor in Apapa and Tin Can. We intend to sustain this,” she said.
She said the revamped ReportGov platform now links all 69 business-facing ministries, departments and agencies to a single complaints system, guaranteeing businesses a response within 72 hours. Physical ReportGov kiosks have also been deployed at major airports and at the Apapa and Tin Can seaports.
PEBEC is also developing a single digital platform to let businesses access multiple government services with one set of credentials, which Audu said would cut repeat paperwork and limit physical contact between businesses and regulators.
Beyond the ports, Audu pointed to memoranda of understanding between the Standards Organisation of Nigeria (SON) and NAFDAC, and between the Nigerian Agricultural Quarantine Service (NAQS) and the Nigeria Export Processing Zones Authority (NEPZA), which she said had eliminated duplicated regulatory inspections. She also cited the expansion of Small Claims Courts to all states and plans for specialised commercial courts and alternative dispute resolution mechanisms nationwide.
Audu announced that PEBEC would soon launch EnableHer, a nationwide programme to formalise informal businesses through clusters offering shared facilities, power, and support with registration and certification.
She said the reforms were designed to unlock private investment and support President Bola Tinubu’s ambition of a one-trillion-dollar economy, stressing that abrupt regulatory changes were now a thing of the past.
“No regulator will come up with regulations without ample stakeholders’ engagement. That has been put in place to secure investments in Nigeria,” she said.
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