SEREC: Documentation bottlenecks, not port congestion, drive cargo delays in Nigeria
The Sea Empowerment and Research Centre (SEREC) has identified documentation bottlenecks and governance inefficiencies as the primary causes of persistent cargo clearance delays at Nigerian ports, dismissing widespread claims that
The Sea Empowerment and Research Centre (SEREC) has identified documentation bottlenecks and governance inefficiencies as the primary causes of persistent cargo clearance delays at Nigerian ports, dismissing widespread claims that physical congestion is the main challenge.
In its latest policy bulletin titled “From Port Congestion to Documentation Congestion: Rethinking Nigeria’s Trade Delay Narrative,” the Centre, through its Head of Research, Dr. Eugene Nweke, argued that the country’s cargo clearance delays have been largely misdiagnosed.
SEREC maintained that the dominant constraint within Nigeria’s port and trade ecosystem lies in documentation processing, driven by a multi-agency system that relies heavily on manual procedures.
The report noted that this position aligns with broader assessments by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, which consistently highlight procedural inefficiencies as major barriers to trade facilitation in developing economies.
It further stressed that documentation remains the single largest bottleneck fueling cargo delays, with a strong consensus among stakeholders supporting this view.
According to the Centre, empirical data indicate that between 60 and 73 per cent of total cargo dwell time in Nigeria is attributable to transaction processes, documentation, customs procedures, and regulatory approvals.
"This confirms that delays occur largely before cargo movement, reinforcing that inefficiencies are embedded within administrative systems,” SEREC said.
“A critical comparison of the Nigeria vs global and regional dwell time reality, SEREC highlighted that current performance indicators reveal a significant competitiveness gap: Nigeria (Apapa & Tin Can Ports) experienced between 8 and 16 days average dwell time.
The centre said that the good news is that the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) one-stop shop, advance ruling trade facilitation tools, fast track clearance/AEO, is changing the narrative.
On the global best practice, SEREC said that cargo dwell time is between 3–5 days (benchmark), with 4 days widely accepted, saying at Lomé (Togo), 2–3 days vessel turnaround; ~7–10 days cargo dwell time, and Tema (Ghana): ~3–4 days turnaround; ~7–10 days cargo dwell time.
More critically, the centre said that Nigerian ports have been found to record cargo dwell times up to 475% higher than global averages, adding that this gap is not marginal—it is structural and systemic.
SEREC asserted that Nigeria’s port inefficiency is fundamentally an execution-layer failure driven by documentation congestion and institutional fragmentation.
However, SEREC said that unless documentation processes are streamlined and execution discipline is enforced, Nigeria risks sustained high trade costs, reduced competitiveness in West Africa, and underperformance of major reforms like the National Single Window.
It said that Nigeria’s cargo does not wait because ports are full—it waits because processes are slow, saying that the future of trade facilitation lies in execution discipline, system integration, and documentation efficiency.
