Regulatory transitions have a habit of stranding the very firms that follow the rules. When a licensing regime changes hands or shifts its process, the importer whose NAFDAC permit lapses mid-cycle can find a perfectly legitimate shipment frozen at the documentation stage — not for any wrongdoing, but for a timing mismatch between two agencies. The Central Bank of Nigeria has moved to ease exactly that kind of bottleneck, granting temporary relief that lets importers use expired NAFDAC licences for Form M processing until 28 February 2026.

The measure is narrow by design, and that is its merit. Form M is the gateway document for legitimate imports, the instrument that opens the foreign-exchange and documentation chain before goods can be cleared at Apapa or Lekki. Tying it rigidly to an unexpired NAFDAC licence makes sense in steady conditions. During a regulatory transition, that same rigidity becomes a trap — it penalises compliant traders for delays they did not cause and cannot fix, and it leaves working capital tied up in goods that cannot move. A time-boxed waiver keeps trade flowing without dismantling the underlying control.

For the operator, the signal is as useful as the relief itself. A central bank willing to grant pragmatic, dated exceptions during transitions is one that understands the cost of friction to the real economy. The 28 February 2026 cut-off is firm, so the window is for clearing the backlog, not for indefinite reliance, and importers who treat it as a deadline rather than a reprieve will avoid being caught a second time. In a trading economy, the regulator that bends without breaking keeps the goods — and the trust — flowing.