Nigeria, Benin begin work on real-time customs data link at Seme-Krake border

Nigeria and Benin Republic have started work on a digital interconnection system that will allow their customs services to exchange declarations, manifests, transit information, risk profiles and enforcement alerts in real time, in a push to cut delays for traders at the Seme-Krake joint border post.

Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi, disclosed this at the assessment and commissioning of the Joint Border Post on the Nigeria-Benin border. He said the two administrations have shared the facility for years but still run separate systems, which has stopped it from operating as a truly joint post.

“Without interconnectivity, this is not a joint border post. It is two border posts sharing a car park,” Adeniyi said.

Once the system is running, a declaration lodged on one side of the border will be visible to the other side in real time, transit consignments can be tracked from their point of origin to destination, and risk profiles or enforcement alerts raised by one administration will reach the other while the information is still operationally useful. Adeniyi acknowledged that both administrations currently operate under one roof but with “no seamless real-time exchange of declarations, manifests, transit information, risk profiles or enforcement alerts between us”.

The stakes for traders are high: Seme-Krake sits on the Abidjan-Lagos Corridor, which carries about 70 per cent of the sub-region’s transit trade, and the crossing operates round the clock throughout the year. Adeniyi warned that every hour lost at the gate is “paid for in the price of goods in markets from Cotonou to Lagos”, while every hour saved benefits traders, transporters, consumers and businesses across the region.

The two administrations also identified further measures to make the border more efficient: restoring scanning facilities, better access control, surveillance and lighting, a standing Nigeria-Benin enforcement and intelligence mechanism for coordinated patrols and rapid response, harmonised bilingual procedures covering cargo, passengers, inspection and transit, joint risk management focused on high-risk consignments, and an empowered joint management structure for the shared infrastructure.

The Director-General of Benin Customs, Colonel Raouf Malehossou, said the two administrations must move beyond sharing experiences to implementing coordinated border management techniques, so that a truck, trader or traveller could eventually be processed only once and the two countries’ data and risk-management systems communicate before the movement reaches the border.

Both customs services also vowed to tackle the extortion and harassment cross-border traders face along the corridor, during the joint assessment of the One-Stop Border Post. The digital system remains a work in progress: no launch date or user enrolment process has been announced, and the anti-extortion commitments are yet to show results on the ground.

Source: The Nation, The Sun Nigeria