— Vows to sustain ₦323bn monthly revenue record, end cargo delays

Funso OLOJO, Editor 

Comptroller Murtala Mu’azu has assumed duty as the 33rd Customs Area Controller (CAC) of the Apapa Area Command, pledging to sustain the Command’s revenue momentum while eliminating avoidable delays in cargo clearance and strengthening trade facilitation at Nigeria’s busiest port.

Mu’azu formally took over from Comptroller Emmanuel Oshoba (rd) on Tuesday, September 29th, 2026, at a ceremony held at the Auditorium of the Apapa Area Command, Lagos, attended by senior security and regulatory officials, government agencies, terminal operators, shipping companies, customs brokers, importers, exporters and other port stakeholders.

The new Controller inherits a Command that recently posted some of the most impressive revenue figures in its history, including a record ₦323 billion monthly collection in July 2026 and a single-day collection of ₦28.102 billion on August 18, 2026.

Acknowledging the weight of the responsibility before him, Mu’azu described his appointment as “a great honour and privilege,” thanking the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, for the confidence reposed in him.

He pledged to discharge the responsibility with “a deep sense of duty” and in line with the economic interests of the country, promising to build on the Command’s achievements in revenue generation, enforcement, trade facilitation and institutional discipline.

The new CAC said his administration would be anchored on the three strategic pillars of the Comptroller-General — consolidation, collaboration and innovation — with particular attention to revenue integrity, efficient trade facilitation, professionalism and meaningful engagement with stakeholders.

On revenue collection, Mu’azu was unequivocal, declaring that every revenue due to government must be properly assessed and collected.

“Every revenue due to government must be properly assessed and collected, and every decision taken by our officers must be capable of standing the test of scrutiny over time,” he said.

But beyond revenue, the new Controller signalled that reducing bottlenecks in cargo clearance would be a major priority of his administration.

He declared that avoidable human delays in cargo processing, which he described as “Non-Tariff Barriers”, would no longer be tolerated.

“Unnecessary human delays in cargo processing otherwise known as Non-Tariff Barriers shall not be tolerated henceforth,” Mu’azu said.

According to him, once all statutory requirements have been met, legitimate cargo should be allowed to move without unnecessary obstruction.

He consequently charged Customs officers to maintain discipline, professionalism, courtesy and decorum in their dealings with importers, exporters, customs brokers and other members of the trading public.

Mu’azu also promised to deepen collaboration with importers, exporters, licensed customs agents, shipping companies, terminal operators, the Nigerian Ports Authority and other government agencies operating within the port environment.

He said such collaboration was essential to making Apapa Port more efficient, predictable and responsive to legitimate trade.

The new CAC openly acknowledged the scale of the revenue challenge left by his predecessor, Oshoba, particularly the unprecedented figures recorded under the outgoing Controller.

“This is indeed a record to reckon with and strive towards matching same. It is therefore a Herculean task upon myself and my team to match and surpass such a record,” Mu’azu said.

He also commended Oshoba for his contributions to enforcement, trade facilitation and the implementation of key modernisation initiatives of the Nigeria Customs Service.

Among the initiatives highlighted were B’Odogwu, Advance Ruling, the Authorised Economic Operator Programme, the One-Stop Shop and Non-Intrusive Inspection technology.

The Advance Ruling programme, in particular, has been positioned as a mechanism for providing greater predictability to legitimate traders by enabling them to obtain clarity on Customs treatment before importation.

Oshoba had, in his farewell address, described Advance Ruling as an initiative that provides legitimate traders with greater predictability and clarity on Customs treatment before importation, thereby reducing uncertainty and strengthening confidence in the trading environment.

In his farewell remarks, Oshoba attributed the achievements recorded during his tenure to the collective efforts of officers, stakeholders and partners of the Command.

“The achievements recorded during my tenure do not belong to one individual. They belong to all of us,” he said.

He charged officers to sustain the standards established during his tenure, stressing that discipline, professionalism and excellence must remain central to the Command’s operations.

“Discipline must remain our foundation, professionalism our standard and excellence our aspiration,” Oshoba said.

He also appealed to officers and stakeholders to extend the same cooperation and support to his successor.

Mu’azu, in turn, called for collective ownership of the Command’s mandate, stressing that the responsibility for sustaining Apapa’s performance could not rest on the CAC alone.

“The success we seek cannot be achieved by the CAC alone. It requires our collective efforts, operational integrity and willingness to uphold the standards of the Service,” he said.

He assured stakeholders that his administration would operate an open and constructive engagement framework based on fairness, mutual respect and the national interest.

With the transition now completed, the new Apapa Customs administration faces the dual task of protecting the Command’s record-breaking revenue performance while making cargo clearance faster, more predictable and less burdened by avoidable administrative delays.

Mu’azu expressed confidence that, with the support of officers and stakeholders, Apapa Area Command would continue to serve as a model of efficient revenue administration, legitimate trade facilitation and professional Customs conduct.

Gloria Odion, Reporter 

The Nigeria Association of Tour Operators (NATOP) marked the 2026 World Tourism Day with a multi-zone celebration across the country, combining professional training, technology, destination marketing, tourism awareness and domestic tourism promotion.

In the South-West, nearly 200 tour operators converged on Ziba Beach Resort, Lagos, where the association turned the World Tourism Day celebration into a practical classroom on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and digital tools to transform tour operations and destination marketing.

The Federal Capital Territory and Northern Zone, in collaboration with Naija Adventurers, organised a Tourism Awareness Walk and hike to the Centre of Nigeria, while the South-South Zone celebrated with a destination tour designed to promote tourism attractions within the region.

The activities were organised in line with the 2026 World Tourism Day theme, “Digital Agenda and Artificial Intelligence to Redesign Tourism.”

Speaking during the South-West celebration in Lagos, NATOP President, Hajia Bolaji Mustapha, said the decision to combine the annual celebration with professional training was aimed at equipping tour operators with the knowledge and digital skills required to remain competitive in a rapidly changing tourism industry.

According to her, the training was designed to teach operators how to deploy AI and other digital tools to promote destinations, create compelling tourism content and grow their businesses.

“We follow the theme and blend it with the current situation. Let’s do the training so that we attach it to World Tourism Day, with the theme, and make sure that we have achieved something while also celebrating,” she said.

Mustapha said the training would help tour operators produce better digital content and use AI to tell compelling stories about Nigerian destinations.

She stressed that operators needed to embrace the digital revolution rather than allow emerging content creators to take over a space traditionally occupied by professional tour operators.

“As tour operators who are willing to tell the good story of Nigeria, we need to bring ourselves up to speed and align with the digital revolution. Let everybody go digital,” she said.

“We also see content creators taking our business, so we want to align with what they do.

“We are the ones who understand the business, and we will be able to tell the story better, so that anybody coming to Nigeria will be able to discover Nigeria with the experts.”

Why Ziba Beach Resort

Explaining the choice of Ziba Beach Resort as the venue, the NATOP President said the association deliberately links its World Tourism Day activities to tourism destinations in order to expose members to facilities and attractions they can subsequently market to tourists.

She said the resort was particularly suitable because of its location and recent expansion, including the launch of its third phase.

“We always attach World Tourism Day to a tourism site. If you look at this whole area and this community, that’s why we see that Ziba is a tourism site. We want to explore it and, of course, the resort has newly launched its third phase.

“We will use this opportunity to look at their rooms, look at how we can sell this destination, and showcase it as a resort that is actually in Nigeria, not Zanzibar. By using the place, we would kill two birds with one stone,” she said.

The operators subsequently embarked on a facility tour of the resort, assessing its accommodation, recreational and other tourism offerings from the perspective of how they could be packaged and marketed to visitors.

Training critical to industry growth

Also speaking, NATOP Vice President, South-West, and Chairman of the zone’s World Tourism Day Organising Committee, Mrs Wonuola Olatunde-Lamidi, said the training was necessary because many operators still lacked adequate knowledge of the fundamentals of tour operation.

She particularly identified tour-package development as an area where some operators needed stronger professional capacity.

“Many don’t understand the foundation of what it is to create a tour package. And when you have people that are not well-trained in an industry, the industry will not grow,” she said.

Olatunde-Lamidi, who said she had spent 16 years in the industry and co-runs Diamonds and Pearls Travels with her husband, explained that professional competence and effective destination marketing could significantly influence where tourists choose to visit.

She said her company had evolved from being perceived merely as a travel agency into a Destination Management Company (DMC) and a trusted tourism brand through deliberate destination promotion.

“We have become a company that, when we talk about a destination, people want to go to that destination because of how we have portrayed the destination,” she said.

According to her, tour operators have considerable influence over destination choices because of their ability to package, market and communicate the attractions and benefits of particular destinations.

“You may not realise that, as tour operators, you can actually decide where people go. You can make people go to a particular destination by marketing it, by letting them know the benefits of that destination,” she said.

The World Tourism Day programme therefore combined learning with leisure, as participants had the opportunity to tour Ziba Beach Resort, inspect its facilities and unwind as part of the celebration.

For NATOP, the 2026 celebration provided an opportunity not only to commemorate World Tourism Day but also to reinforce the need for professional capacity development, digital transformation and stronger destination storytelling as tools for growing Nigeria’s tourism industry.

Monday Discourse with Ibrahim Nasiru 

The recent technical discussions between the leadership of the newly transmuted Nigeria Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) mark a critical turning point in the governance of Nigeria’s maritime sector.

Prompted by a definitive ministerial directive from the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr. Adegboyega Oyetola, the two agencies are moving to operationalize the transfer of Inland Dry Port functions from the old Nigerian Shippers’ Council architecture straight to the NPA.

For decades, Nigeria’s maritime ecosystem has been severely suffocated by overlapping institutional mandates, administrative friction, and a counterproductive confusion over who regulates commerce versus who drives infrastructure.

By enforcing this sweeping separation of port economic regulation from core operational development, the federal government is finally addressing the structural flaws that have long stopped Nigeria from becoming the dominant maritime hub of West Africa.

Under the fresh provisions of the NPERA Act 2026, particularly the critical alignment of Section 51, the administrative boundary lines are being redrawn with clinical precision.

The old regime, which forced the Shippers’ Council to simultaneously act as an economic referee and an active promoter of inland dry ports, was an unsustainable model that created inherent institutional contradictions.

You cannot effectively police a commercial market while actively building and managing its operational assets.

Shifting the promotion, development, and operational oversight of inland dry ports entirely to the NPA allows the authority to leverage its massive, existing deep-sea infrastructure and engineering competencies to rapidly scale up these hinterland Ports.

This clean realignment ensures that Inland Dry Ports stop being slow-moving administrative projects and finally become hyper-efficient logistics nodes that seamlessly extend the economic reach of our coastlines into the landlocked states of the North.

Consequently, the collaborative maturity demonstrated during the recent strategy session between NPERA Director-General, Dr. Pius Akutah, and the NPA Managing Director, Dr. Abubakar Dantsoho, signals a refreshing departure from the toxic inter-agency warfare that defined the past.

In previous dispensations, such a sweeping transfer of functions would have triggered fierce turf battles, with executives aggressively hoarding administrative powers to the detriment of national trade efficiency.

Akutah’s strategic proposal for a high-level joint committee—integrating NPERA, NPA, the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), and the parent ministry, proactively tethers all moving parts to a single, accountable execution framework.

This coordinated approach is exactly what is needed to assure international shipping lines, domestic clearing agents, and private concessionaires that the transition will be frictionless, legally sound, and completely free from double-taxation trapdoors.

Ultimately, the successful execution of this structural unbundling will be the ultimate metric used to grade President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Marine and Blue Economy agenda.

If properly managed, freeing NPERA to focus strictly on economic regulation will create a fiercely competitive, transparently priced maritime marketplace that drives down the prohibitive cost of doing business at our Ports.

Simultaneously, placing the Inland Dry Ports within the NPA’s operational portfolio should accelerate cargo evacuation times, de-congest the chaotic Apapa and Tin Can corridors, and unlock the dormant multi-billion dollar trade potential of the hinterlands.

Minister Oyetola has laid down a courageous, legally backed blueprint for structural clarity. It is now up to the joint leadership of Akutah and Dantsoho to aggressively transform this institutional unbundling into a thriving, world-class economic reality.

Ibrahim Nasiru is a public affairs analyst