Road transport unions have welcomed the Federal Government’s plan to establish 500 Compressed Natural Gas filling stations across the country, saying the initiative will reduce transportation costs and ease inflation if properly implemented.

Speaking on the development, the Deputy President of the National Union of Road Transport Workers, Aliyu Ore, said the distribution of the stations across the states would help bring down transport fares.

He said, “It’s a good one. And if everything goes well, it’s automatically going to come down. Because by virtue of this, at least each state will get like 20. While some commercial states will get more than that.

“But at least 20 in every state, and the transportation cost in the area will come down. If everything goes the way it’s supposed to go. One thing, you may get a filling station, and there is no gas. So, if all 500 filling stations are available and function well, I assure you that the price of transportation will come down. I’m very sure, and it’s a good one.”

Also speaking, the Secretary-General of the Road Transport Employers Association of Nigeria, Ibrahim Yusuf, described the initiative as a welcome development, saying it would reduce hardship and inflation.

Yusuf said, “We have a serious problem in the petrol and transport fields because, one, it will question the problem, and it will reduce the hardship and inflation drastically. It’s a welcome idea. You know, it has to start from somewhere. Already, the willingness and the intentions are there.

“And we are assured that, yes, these things are coming. And we believe it will come to reality. And as such, the citizens of Nigeria will enjoy the gesture of the president. By the time it’s shared with the end users, impact will be felt. I know it will reduce poverty; the drastic cost of transportation and inflation will be reduced.

“A bag of rice will be reduced in price. So that is the effect of the cost of transportation that Tinubu has done. That is what you should be expecting. The moment you can get relief from one side, it will go around.”

The operators stressed that the expected impact of the CNG stations would depend on their availability and functionality, particularly ensuring that motorists can access gas whenever they need it.

In August 2026, President Bola Tinubu directed the rollout of another 500 CNG refuelling stations nationwide, bringing the Federal Government’s planned network to 1,000 stations. The directive followed a meeting with state governors on measures to reduce transportation costs.

The Managing Director of Chinua Achebe Airport, Umueri in Anambra state, Mr Martins Nwafor has attributed a low record of Passengers traffic in the Airport to high ticket pricing by airline operators using the airport.

Nwafor who disclosed this in an interview with journalists at Omagwa Airport in Portharcourt,  said the difference in pricing which favoured neighbouring airports was a major factor responsible for low traffic in the route.

He said the airport now operates eight flights everyday with two service providers, adding that it could be more when it received private jets which were non-scheduled.

Nwafor also encouraged air transport passengers from Anambra and neighbouring states to use the airport to enjoy the cutting edge facility and support its revenue base for greater transformation.

According to him, “we need an increase in the number of flights but the disparity in ticket pricing which favours airports around here, is essentially why they get more flights than us.

“I am not an airline operator, but I know there is a pricing method which is informed by the interplay of demand and supply.

“So, I am calling on the two airline operators using this airport, who incidentally are from Anambra, to look at the disparity in ticket pricing.

“For instance, while a ticket to a nearby airport is N115, 000, it is as much as N200,000 here, it is discouraging people from coming to our airport.

“But we have been talking recently and it is closing up and more passengers are coming here.

“The airport revenue from passengers is from only those taking off from here, those who land here do not pay passenger service charges at the point of origin”.

Nwafor said the Chinua Achebe Airport was aeronautically complete and optimally functional even though there were other necessary ancillary facilities such as hangers, shops, malls which private investors could come and invest in.

He said the airport was over 90 percent complete when it was inaugurated for commercial flight operations, adding that the management had overcome some of the restrictions due to continued improvement.

“The airport itself does not exist on its own, there are infrastructure that are purely aeronautical, they are what make the airport to function, making it safe for airplane to land and take off safely and securely.

“There is no compromise in the aeronautical aspect of the airport; here, if an airport is not ready, an aeroplane will not land there.

“We started with small airplanes of about 50 passengers because we were flying Visual Flight Rules (VFR) which does not permit the use of big airplanes,

“Our Instrument Landing System, that is the Doppler Very High Frequency Omnidirectional Radio Range Equipment, was installed even though not totally calibrated.

“But we have progressed, we have overcome some of the restrictions due to continued improvement and we now fly at night especially in December when we have passenger surge.

“We have more than enough airport taxis and one of the best airport taxi systems, they are well profiled by the security agencies and identified with their vehicles to ensure safety of passengers,” he said.

By: Enoch Epelle

In a bid to carry her stakeholders along on the Post clearance audit(PCA) procedures, the Nigeria Customs service has intensified it ongoing nationwide sensitisation seminar to better educate importers , manufacturers and the entire business communities on the application of the newly introduced World Customs Organisation (WCO) trade facilitation tools as enshrined in the Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023.

The stakeholders workshop which was organise by the Post Clearance Audit (PCA) Unit of the NCS on Thursday in Lagos was to educate stakeholders on the WCO trade facilitation tool, the Authorise Economic Operator (AEO) and the role of the PCA in accordance with the WCO convention and application.

In his keynote address at the workshop at  Eko hotel in Lagos , Comptroller General of Customs, Bashir Adewale Adeniyi MFR, said he was

glad to see the trading community so well represented, because according to him “they are the focus of today’s engagement.

“I will begin further back than the audit function itself, because Post-Clearance Audit did not arrive in Nigeria by accident. It arrived because two things happened at about the same time.

“The first is that the Nigeria Customs Service Act, 2023 gave this Service a modern legal foundation, and with it an express mandate to verify compliance after goods have been released. The second is that The Federal Government set a clear

direction on revenue and on the business environment, and asked the agencies of

government to meet both objectives at once.

“That instruction deserves to be stated plainly, because it is harder than it sounds. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s administration has pursued a broadening of non-oil revenue, a reform of the fiscal system and a serious effort to reduce the cost and friction of doing business in Nigeria. Customs sits precisely where those objectives meet. We are asked to collect more, and to obstruct less.”

Adeniyi said the scale of the first half of that instruction is worth stating.

 He informed that in 2025 , the Service collected ?7.281 trillion against a target of ?6.584 trillion, exceeding it by ?697billion, and rising from ?6.1 trillion the previous year,

“This is a growth of some 19 percent year on year. For 2026 the target set for us is ?11.074 trillion. At the end of

June we stood at ?4.30 trillion, which the Board reviewed at its 65th Regular Meeting on 2nd of September. These figures make a point about the methods that must be applied and not celebrated alone. Numbers of that order cannot be delivered by opening more containers. They can only be delivered by knowing which containers to open.” .

To achieve more revenue collection, Adeniyi said is only one way to do both. “Control has to move off the quay. If every

consignment must be opened at the port before it is released, then revenue assurance and trade facilitation will pull against each other for as long as we practise Customs, and the trader will pay for that contest in demurrage and delay.

 Post-Clearance Audit is how that contest is resolved. It allows goods to move on the strength of the declaration, and moves the verification to the records, after release, where it can be done thoroughly and without holding up commerce.

“The good thing is that we now have recent measurement to work with. In January this year the Service published the findings of the Time Release Study conducted at Tin Can Island Port, a facility that handles more than a tenth of Nigeria’s seaborne trade.

“The study followed 601 import declarations from arrival to physical exit, and it was carried out with the shipping lines, the terminal operators, the Nigerian Ports Authority, licensed agents and the banks, so that what it recorded would be the real operating environment and not our own account of it.

“The central finding deserves the attention of everybody in this room. A container at Tin Can Island sat for about 5 days before it left the port. The physical examination of that container took a matter of hours. For 98.7 per cent of consignments, the interval between booking for examination and physical exit averaged close to 4 days, and a small number of prolonged cases carried the overall average to nearly 5.

“Read that carefully, because it does not say what people often assume it says. It

does not say that Customs examination is slow. It says that examination is fast and

clearance is slow, and that the difference between the two is made up of manual

processes, fragmented coordination between agencies, and the waiting that these

produce. The delay is in the architecture, not in the inspection.

“As I said when the

report was launched, the study allowed us to move from assumptions to facts, and some of those facts were uncomfortable.”, he explained.

Speaking further Adeniyi said if the problem was slow examination, the answer would be more examiners.

 “It is not, and so the answer is different. The answer is to reduce the number of

consignments that need to be stopped at all, by verifying afterwards those that do not

and not celebrated alone. Numbers of that order cannot be delivered by opening more

containers. They can only be delivered by knowing which containers to open.

“There is only one way to do both. Control has to move off the quay. If every

consignment must be opened at the port before it is released, then revenue assurance and trade facilitation will pull against each other for as long as we practise Customs, and the trader will pay for that contest in demurrage and delay.

“So, the message today is a simple one. Compliance should not be driven by fear

of enforcement. It should be driven by confidence in a system that is fair, predictable and consistently applied. Businesses need clarity. You need to understand your obligations, and you are equally entitled to understand your rights. You are entitled to know that an audit will be conducted professionally, transparently and within the applicable legal framework, by officers”. he noted

 It also gives you an opportunity to speak to us. We are listening, and we are prepared to learn.

Adeniyi urges the stakeholders that their partnership must rest on responsibility, and the responsibility runs both ways.

He said the Service expects traders to keep accurate records, make truthful declarations and observe the laws governing international trade.

 “Where errors occur, and they will, our system should encourage their prompt correction and voluntary disclosure instead of punishing the trader who comes forward.

“For our part, we are moving the Service from a culture of intervention to one in which compliance is the natural outcome of understanding, trust and cooperation. As we modernise, we are applying technology, trade data and professional expertise to make our processes faster while strengthening revenue assurance.

Earlier in his welcome address, the host and Assistant Comptroller General, Post Clearance Audit ( PCA), ACG Babatude Olomu PhD said the engagement comes at a critical time in the NCS efforts to strengthen PCA as a strategic instrument for revenue assurance, voluntary compliance, trade facilitation and improved customs administration.

“It also provides an important platform for strengthening understanding, cooperation and mutual trust between the Service and our stakeholders.”, he assured

According to ACG Olomu the programme is geared towards strengthening three key objectives: Enhancing Stakeholder Understanding and Voluntary Compliance;

Strengthening Revenue Assurance and Risk-Based Compliance and; Deepening Partnership and Institutional Cooperation.

He said the impact of PCA interventions is increasingly evident in the Service’s revenue performance. “Between January and August 2025, the Service recovered ?21,278,494,169.61, while the corresponding period in 2026 recorded ?27,181,037,678.77 – an increase of ?5,902,543,509.16, representing approximately 27.7% growth year-on-year.

“This substantial improvement reflects the growing effectiveness of our PCA interventions, particularly enhanced risk-based targeting, more robust audit processes, strengthened case management and improved stakeholder compliance.

 Beyond the increase in recoveries, this performance demonstrates the PCA’s expanding contribution to revenue assurance, compliance management and accountability, while reinforcing the Service’s commitment to leveraging post-clearance interventions to secure government revenue and promote a more compliant trading environment.

By: Nkpemenyie Mcdominic, Lagos