Blue Economy
lMinistry of Marine and Blue Economy to Approve Digital Pricing Tool for Freight Forwarding, Haulage
Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy to Approve Digital Pricing Tool for Freight Forwarding, Haulage
CRFFN Registrar Says Proposal Already at Ministry Level; Stakeholder Engagement to Follow Approval
April 28, 2026 | By Okeoghene Onoriobe
The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy is on the verge of approving a digital standardisation and price determination framework for freight forwarding services — covering customs clearance and haulage operations — in what industry watchers say could be the most consequential structural reform to Nigeria’s logistics cost architecture in years.
The Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria (CRFFN) Registrar, Mr. Kingsley Igwe, disclosed this at a town hall meeting organised by JournalNG in Lagos on Friday, confirming that a formal proposal had already been submitted to Minister Adegboyega Oyetola’s ministry and was currently under review.
The Problem: Opacity and Lump-Sum Pricing
At the heart of the initiative is a long-standing grievance across Nigeria’s port and logistics ecosystem — the absence of any standardised, itemised pricing structure for freight forwarding services. Under the current regime, cargo owners engage agents without a clear understanding of what the agent’s service charge actually is, as fees are bundled into opaque lump-sum figures that obscure cost components.
“Today, if you want to clear your consignment, you don’t even know how much the agent’s service charge is because everything is lump sum,” Igwe noted.
“We did a study to establish standards that will guide the industry. For haulage, we made comparisons with several other countries — how is haulage charged? They charge per kilometre, incorporating all necessary cost components such as wear and tear, valuation, insurance, risk and everything on the truck.”
WTO Framework as the Blueprint
Igwe anchored the CRFFN’s approach in a World Trade Organisation framework, which prescribes standardisation as a foundational tool for achieving predictability in global logistics costs. According to the registrar, that framework has informed the development of standard operating procedures — covering port procedures, customs procedures, haulage procedures, and freight forwarding pricing — in peer economies, while Nigeria has yet to adopt equivalent structures.
“That means standardising based on certain parameters. But it’s not so here, and that was why we tried to inculcate this last year,” he said.
Agents the Silent Casualties
In a notable turn, Igwe used the forum to challenge the popular assumption that freight forwarding agents are among the maritime sector’s most comfortably compensated players. He argued instead that the current pricing chaos was quietly devastating agents financially.
“The agents, who most people think go home with a humongous amount of money after clearing, end up broke. Most of them even sacrifice their own money to add to what they are being given because of their inability to predict what it will cost to clear the goods,” he said, adding that he had personal experience of the problem.
He described a recurring cycle in which agents underquote to win clients, only to be confronted by unexpected debit notes from customs — with shippers refusing to make up the shortfall, leaving agents to borrow and absorb the difference themselves.
“He becomes a debtor. He is dying inside slowly. And we say these freight forwarders take too much money home. It’s not true,” Igwe said.
The Digital Mechanism
The proposed framework is designed as a digital tool that would allow agents to input risk variables at the point of engagement, generating a transparent cost projection that accounts for contingencies without eroding the agent’s fixed service percentage.
“The mechanism we are coming out with takes care of every unforeseen risk. It is digital. It would help them input all the necessary risk factors that will take care of the cost without tampering with their own percentage of service charge. The charge is going to be constant whether the risk is high or not — we will now define who, at the point of risk, should bear responsibility,” Igwe explained, noting that shippers sometimes provide inaccurate Bill of Lading information, with agents bearing the consequences.
Igwe confirmed that once ministerial approval is secured, an intensive stakeholder engagement process will be convened to define implementation timelines and parameters.
“My proposal is there at the Ministry, it’s being worked on. By the time it’s been approved, then we’ll hold an intensive stakeholder engagement for the implementation process to be defined,” he said.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigerian shippers, freight forwarders, and port-dependent businesses, the proposed framework arrives at a critical juncture. The opacity of logistics costs has long been cited as a drag on Nigeria’s trade competitiveness — fuelling disputes between cargo owners and agents, distorting cost planning for importers and exporters, and undermining confidence in the freight forwarding profession as a regulated vocation.
If ministerial approval is granted and the digital tool is properly implemented, it could mark a meaningful step toward the pricing transparency that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council and other trade facilitation bodies have long championed. Crucially, the per-kilometre haulage model proposed by CRFFN — benchmarked against international practice — would introduce a rational, auditable basis for one of the most contentious cost components in Nigeria’s port-to-destination logistics chain.
The key question now is implementation fidelity. Nigeria has a well-documented history of regulatory frameworks that secure approval but stall at the stakeholder engagement and enforcement stages. Whether CRFFN, working under the Oyetola-led ministry, can convert this proposal into an operational standard that agents, shippers, and customs brokers actually use — rather than a document that gathers dust — will be the true measure of this initiative’s worth.