Extortion: PEBEC to equip truckers with body cameras

The Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council on Tuesday disclosed that it was equipping truckers and freight forwarders along the Apapa and Tin-Can port corridors with body cameras to gather evidence against officials manning illegal checkpoints.

It said the absence of footage of officials caught in the act of extortion had frustrated prosecution efforts during several rounds of enforcement visits since January.

The Director-General of the Council, Zahrah Audu, made the disclosure while addressing State House correspondents at the weekly Meet the Press session organised by the Presidential Communications Team at the Aso Rock Villa, Abuja.

She added, “In addition to that, as we speak now, we have a stakeholder engagement with, which is for sensitisation of the truckers, because the truckers and the freight forwarders are the main people who are at the bane of the problem, who suffer from these issues from customs.

We have already done some engagement, but we are having a more robust one in September or October.  We are, in addition to that even giving them as one of the interventions that we are doing, body cams. We want evidence.”

Audu explained that during the January, March and July enforcement visits, no arrests were made because officials found at the checkpoints were not caught in the act of extortion.

“We didn’t catch them red-handed, rent-seeking. They are officials of whichever agency they represent, and nobody had outrightly told them that they cannot set up here.

Now that we have clearly marked out the legal checkpoints and put in place ample information, if they engage with truckers or freight forwarders and there is any kind of extortion or rent-seeking, they know where to escalate,” she said.

The DG added that when evidence was secured, prosecution would follow.

“If and when we have evidence of rent-seeking or any malpractice, we will prosecute. We will work with the Attorney-General’s office to make sure we prosecute to the full extent of the law,” Audu said.

The PEBEC boss added that the council has erected signages at every legal checkpoint in the Apapa and Tin-Can corridors, each carrying a QR code linked directly to the ReportGov escalation portal.

The Nigerian Ports Authority, she said, is also developing a unified access pass system that would prevent unauthorised pedestrian access to the port premises to address what she described as the historical porousness of the port perimeter that has enabled extortion networks to operate.

On cargo clearance, Audu said PEBEC was working to reduce Nigeria’s average cargo dwell time from 21 days to seven days, a target set by the Ports and Customs Efficiency Committee chaired by Vice President Kashim Shettima and established in April 2025.

“Our average cargo dwell time was about 21 days, making us extremely uncompetitive if we compare ourselves to our neighbours in Ghana or Benin Republic. As a resolution from the committee, we were tasked to bring it down to seven days. It is a work in progress,” she stated.

She explained that some interventions the council had deployed toward that target include joint cargo inspection exercises that synchronise all agency checks at berth, a shift from physical cargo inspection to scanner-based processes, and the National Single Window, a unified digital platform that coordinates documentation across all agencies relevant to imports and exports.

She noted, “Any nation that is serious about growth needs to be concerned about the functionality within its ports corridor.”

Audu also outlined broader PEBEC reforms, including the Nigerian Regulatory Impact Analysis Framework launched in January 2025, which requires evidence-based stakeholder engagement before any MDA introduces a new policy.

She also cited the ReportGov platform, relaunched in June 2025, connects businesses directly with all 69 business-facing MDAs tracked by PEBEC, with a 72-hour response commitment.

She said a second nationwide subnational tour had just concluded across 35 states, designed to activate state-level Ease of Doing Business Councils and link states to a $750m World Bank facility under the State Action Business Environment Reform Programme.

However, Audu acknowledged that informal sector businesses remained grossly underserved.

“We are not doing enough for them. It is an area of concern for me,” she said, announcing a forthcoming initiative called Enable Her, a programme to create business clusters where informal businesses would be guided through formalisation, given access to stable electricity and relevant equipment, and supported to scale.

Illegal checkpoints along Nigeria’s port corridors have been a chronic and heavily documented challenge.

A 2023 report by the Manufacturers Association of Nigeria estimated that logistics costs in Nigeria were 40 to 60 per cent higher than comparable economies in the region, with port corridor checkpoints, many of them unauthorised collection points operated by uniformed officials from multiple agencies, identified as a major contributing factor.

Nigeria’s 21-day cargo dwell time compares poorly to Tema port in Ghana, which processes cargo in an average of four to five days, and Cotonou in Benin Republic, which has become the preferred entry point for goods destined for Nigeria precisely because of the cost and delay advantages it offers over Lagos ports.