National Single Window needs standalone law to survive, maritime lawyers tell FG

Nigeria’s National Single Window project may face legal and operational hurdles unless the government urgently creates a dedicated legal framework to support it, maritime lawyers and trade experts have warned.

At the Nigerian Maritime Law Association meeting in Lagos, experts argued that while the trade digitisation initiative could help tackle longstanding inefficiencies at Nigerian ports, its long-term viability depends on legislation that clearly defines how it should operate, who should drive it and how disputes, liabilities and inter-agency conflicts would be resolved.

Mike Igbokwe, president of the Association, said the project should be backed either by a standalone Act of the National Assembly or amendments to existing legislation such as the Business Facilitation Act.

“Our decision is that there should be a legal framework. That will be used to drive the process,” Igbokwe said.

He warned that implementation without a dedicated law could expose the project to litigation from stakeholders who may challenge attempts to compel compliance.

“If there is no act or such legal framework in place, implementation may face legal challenges. People who we want to enforce it on may challenge it on the basis that there is no act provided for how it is being driven now,” he said.

The National Single Window is designed to digitise and centralise trade documentation and approvals across government agencies, allowing traders to submit information through a single platform instead of navigating multiple agencies and processes.

Read also: Explainer: What to know as Nigeria’s National Single Window goes live March 27

But experts at the event argued that Nigeria’s existing regulatory structure could complicate implementation.

According to Igbokwe, overlapping functions among agencies continue to create duplication, delays and higher transaction costs for businesses.

“The challenge we have currently is that we have overlapping functions. Multiple agencies doing different things. And that wastes a lot of time, a lot of effort and money,” he said.

He linked those inefficiencies to Nigeria’s declining competitiveness in regional trade, arguing that high import costs and procedural bottlenecks are pushing cargo to neighbouring ports.

“A lot of goods that ought to have come into Nigeria, to Nigerian ports, are going to Kotonou, neighbouring ports. We’re losing revenue,” he said.

Tola Fakolade, director of the NSW, said the legal issues extend beyond merely creating an enabling law.

He noted that fragmented legislation across agencies has historically fuelled institutional conflicts, with agencies relying on different legal mandates to justify overlapping roles and competing processes.

“We have agencies within the same maritime ecosystem that have conflicted with each other,” he said.

Fakolade said the Single Window would require legal reforms touching areas such as data governance, digital documentation, liability, dispute resolution and institutional design.

He noted that while some Nigerian laws contain isolated references to single window systems, there is no comprehensive framework robust enough to sustain a national platform.

“There are sprinkles in certain laws that mention a single window,” he said. “One thing for the single window to be more established and more sustainable, it actually needs one law … that is very detailed, to be able to stand alone.”

Among the unresolved questions, he said, is who bears responsibility if technical failures, data loss or system glitches cause financial losses for traders.

“If something happens on the single window today and there is data loss, who is responsible? If something happens on the single window today, technical glitches, and the importer says we incurred losses, who is responsible?” he asked.

Last month, regulators met with terminal operators and shipping companies to negotiate waivers for NSW-incurred demurrage and rent.

Read also: Port delays choke national shipping portal six weeks after launch

The discussion also revealed differing views on how the system should ultimately be governed.

Some participants pointed to international models where public-private partnerships help run national single window systems, arguing that stronger private-sector participation can improve governance and reduce political interference.

Others cautioned against handing extensive control of Nigeria’s trade data infrastructure to private actors, arguing that the platform should remain firmly under government oversight because of its strategic importance.

Participants also stressed the need to align the initiative with broader legal frameworks covering electronic signatures, digital evidence, data protection and paperless trade to ensure electronic transactions are not disadvantaged relative to paper-based processes.

While acknowledging that legislation in Nigeria can be slow, especially as electoral activities intensify, speakers argued that political prioritisation from the presidency could accelerate the process.