Nigeria’s home-grown customs modernisation programme is set to become the model for a $3.1 billion customs reform project across Africa, in what the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) described as a major demonstration of the country’s ability to develop and export infrastructure solutions.
The development followed the signing of a 20-year concession agreement between the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) Secretariat and Bergmans Security Consultants and Supplies Limited, the parent company of Trade Modernisation Project (TMP), to deploy a customs modernisation system across about 50 AfCFTA member states.
The project is expected to support customs operations within the continental free trade area, which covers a market of about 1.3 billion people.
The Director-General of the ICRC, Dr Jobson Oseodion Ewalefoh, said in Abuja on Tuesday that the adoption of Nigeria’s Customs Modernisation Project as the basis for the continental initiative was evidence that properly designed public-private partnerships (PPPs) could produce solutions with benefits beyond Nigeria.
According to him, the decision to use a Nigerian-developed system for a continent-wide project was significant because the technology was developed locally and tested within the Nigerian Customs Service before being considered for wider deployment.
‘Africa is not just adopting a piece of technology. Africa is adopting a Nigerian idea, built by Nigerians, proven on Nigerian soil, and now trusted to carry the trade ambitions of an entire continent,’ Ewalefoh said.
He said the development showed what could be achieved when government agencies and private investors worked together under a clear regulatory framework.
‘This is what PPPs, properly structured and properly regulated, can deliver,’ he added.
Ewalefoh spoke while reacting to the AfCFTA customs modernisation concession and shortly after a monitoring and compliance visit to the Nigerian project, where he inspected the progress of B’Odogwu, the Unified Customs Management System being deployed by the Nigeria Customs Service.
B’Odogwu is at the centre of the Customs Service’s ongoing digital transformation, with the system designed to modernise customs procedures, improve the processing of trade transactions and strengthen revenue collection.
A statement from the ICRC on Tuesday noted that ‘the ICRC chief has a long association with the project. Before his appointment as Director-General, he served as the Commission’s desk officer for the initiative during its early structuring stages.’
Ewalefoh recalled that the project was initially met with questions over whether it could work and whether the private sector partner had the capacity to deliver the required technology. ‘When this project came on board, there were a lot of doubts. We asked ourselves: will this work, can we trust the capacity of the proponent? But today, what we are seeing is amazing,’ he said.
According to him, the project also had to overcome institutional resistance before it could gain acceptance, describing the initiative as the first project in Nigeria to be implemented as a presidential initiative through a PPP arrangement.
‘There was commitment at the highest level. Everybody was there; the project was structured. This is the first project in the history of this country that was executed as a presidential initiative, through a PPP,’ he said.
Ewalefoh said one of the most important aspects of the project was that Nigeria chose to develop its own capacity instead of depending entirely on foreign technology providers.
He said the achievement should encourage more confidence in Nigerian engineers, technology companies and other professionals capable of producing solutions for African markets. ‘It should be our pride that Nigeria can sell something to the rest of Africa. We are not selling a solution built by a foreign company; we are selling an indigenous Nigerian company to the world,’ he said.
The ICRC Director-General said Nigerian engineers and other local professionals were responsible for developing the system, describing the achievement as an example of how local expertise could become an exportable economic asset.
He also praised the relationship between the Nigeria Customs Service and TMP, saying the arrangement demonstrated that a PPP did not have to weaken the role of government. ‘There is proper synergy between the grantor and the concessionaire. The result we are seeing today speaks for itself,’ he said.
For Ewalefoh, the major difficulty facing reforms of this nature was not necessarily a shortage of money or ideas, but resistance from institutions and individuals accustomed to existing ways of doing things. ‘The biggest challenge is not ideas, the biggest challenge is not funding – the biggest challenge is resistance to change,’ he said.
He commended the Nigeria Customs Service for opening its operations to modern technology and private-sector expertise, saying the willingness to change had been important to the progress recorded under the customs modernisation programme.
The ICRC chief also praised the Comptroller-General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, for his role in pushing the deployment of B’Odogwu across Customs commands.
He said the sustained expansion of the system had contributed to the confidence that Nigeria’s customs modernisation programme had gained and ultimately helped position it for adoption under the AfCFTA initiative.
The ICRC said the customs project should not be viewed as an isolated PPP success, pointing to other major infrastructure projects, including the Lekki Deep Sea Port, as examples of how private capital could be used to deliver strategic infrastructure through properly structured concession agreements.
Ewalefoh linked the development to the Federal Government’s ambition of building a $1 trillion economy under the Renewed Hope Development Plan 2026-2030, which places significant reliance on private investment to finance economic expansion.
He said the customs modernisation project offered a practical example of how the government could attract private capital into critical infrastructure without relying entirely on public borrowing.
‘Every naira of private investment that goes into infrastructure like this is a naira the government does not have to borrow, while the returns, in revenue and efficiency, still accrue to the country,’ he said.
He added that the selection of Bergmans for the AfCFTA project represented a shift in Nigeria’s position within the African economy, with the country increasingly capable of supplying technology and infrastructure solutions to other African nations rather than simply serving as a market for foreign companies. ‘Nigeria is no longer only a market but a supplier of solutions to Africa – the kind of enterprise the $1 trillion agenda is built on,’ Ewalefoh said.
The AfCFTA development also comes against the background of renewed calls for African countries to work more closely together on infrastructure and PPP development.
Only weeks earlier, Ewalefoh had spoken at the ECOWAS Infrastructure Forum in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, where he called for stronger cooperation among national PPP institutions in West Africa.
He had proposed a regional network that would allow PPP institutions to share technical knowledge, develop common standards and improve the preparation and implementation of projects involving more than one country.
According to him, the adoption of Nigeria’s customs modernisation model under AfCFTA is now providing an example of how such regional cooperation can translate into an actual project.
‘What we are seeing with AfCFTA today is the regional cooperation I called for in Abidjan taking concrete shape; one country’s well-regulated PPP can become the infrastructure backbone of an entire continent’ he said.
The ICRC also rejected concerns that PPP arrangements could result in job losses, saying the customs modernisation project had instead created opportunities for Nigerian engineers and other technical professionals while supporting improvements in customs revenue collection.
The Commission said the experience showed that private-sector participation, when properly regulated, could support both government revenue and employment rather than work against them.
The AfCFTA Secretariat’s decision to replicate the Nigerian model followed the experience recorded with the Trade Modernisation Project in Nigeria.
AfCFTA Secretary-General Wamkele Mene said the Nigerian experience showed that technology could significantly change the way customs administrations operate.
He said the results recorded in Nigeria gave the continental body confidence that the model could be adapted for use across the wider African market.
The $3.1 billion AfCFTA customs modernisation concession therefore represents more than the expansion of a technology platform. For Nigeria, it provides an opportunity to demonstrate that locally developed expertise can compete beyond the domestic market and become part of the infrastructure supporting Africa’s single market.
For the government’s PPP policy, the development also offers a test of whether successful domestic projects can be transformed into commercially viable solutions for other African countries, while reducing dependence on public funds for major infrastructure investment.