The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) and the Cameroon Customs Administration have intensified efforts to remove barriers to cross-border trade and strengthen economic integration through the modernisation of the Ekok-Mfum One-Stop Border Post (OSBP).
The two countries launched a joint assessment of the border post on Tuesday, September 8, 2026, as part of measures to eliminate trade bottlenecks, enhance border security and facilitate the movement of legitimate goods and travellers between Nigeria and Cameroon.
The high-level exercise, themed “Leveraging the Nigeria Customs Service Trade Modernisation Project to Advance Seamless Cross-Border Trade and Shared Prosperity,” brought together customs authorities, technical experts, security agencies, development partners and community leaders from both countries.
Speaking at the event, Comptroller-General of Customs, Adewale Adeniyi, said the initiative was building on the longstanding relationship between the two customs administrations to develop a more efficient border management system capable of supporting wider regional integration.
“We are not building from nothing. We are taking something that works between the two of us and asking whether it can be made to work for the region and hopefully for our continent,” Adeniyi said.
He acknowledged the support of the African Development Bank, ECOWAS, ECCAS, Afreximbank and the AfCFTA Secretariat in advancing the border modernisation agenda.
Adeniyi disclosed that officials from both customs administrations had recently undertaken a study tour of the Beitbridge Border Post between South Africa and Zimbabwe to examine best practices in coordinated border management.
He added that technical teams from Nigeria and Cameroon were working to finalise a joint operational agreement, expected to be signed at the forthcoming C-PACT conference.
The Director-General of Cameroon Customs, Fongod Nuvaga, described the joint assessment as the first concrete step towards achieving more unified and efficient border operations.
Nuvaga called for real-time data sharing and joint risk-management systems, stressing that such mechanisms would allow cargo and travellers to be processed once instead of being subjected to multiple checks by agencies on both sides of the border.
The initiative is expected to reduce delays, lower the cost of cross-border transactions and improve the movement of goods and people along the Mfum-Ekok corridor.
The exercise also featured the launch of the Mfum-Ekok Border Modernisation Initiative, which seek to digitise customs workflows, upgrade physical infrastructure and deploy technology to improve trade facilitation.
The initiative is expected to unlock new economic opportunities for border communities while advancing the objectives of the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
The Nigeria-Cameroon collaboration is therefore being positioned as a model for more coordinated border management, enhanced regional trade and shared economic prosperity across Central and West Africa.
