They noted that the service, rather than facilitate trade, which is its core mandate, focuses on enforcement, seizures, arrests and revenue generation – a contradiction of international conventions.
President Muhammadu Buhari, in 2017, issued the EO1 on the Promotion of Transparency and Efficiency, which was aimed at removing bureaucratic constraints to doing business and making the country a progressively easier place to start and grow a business. Former member of the Presidential Committee on Destination Inspection and Ministerial Committee on Fiscal Policy and Import Clearance Procedure, Lucky Amiwero, lamented that NCS has been militarised, such that it focused on enforcement and arrests of cargoes instead of trade facilitation procedures.