Blue Economy
Broken Laws, Broken Promises: How Nigeria’s Outdated Legal Framework is Costing the Blue Economy Billions
Broken Laws, Broken Promises: How Nigeria’s Outdated Legal Framework is Costing the Blue Economy Billions
By Raymond Gold | Co-producer & Research Reporter | Waterways News, Lagos
Nigeria sits on one of Africa’s most formidable maritime endowments — over 853 kilometres of Atlantic coastline, a sprawling network of inland waterways, rich fishery stocks, and offshore energy reserves that remain largely untapped. Yet, decade after decade, the country’s blue economy bleeds potential. The reason, experts and legal analysts increasingly agree, is not simply a lack of vision or investment. It is a failure of law.
The legislative architecture underpinning Nigeria’s maritime and ocean economy is, in many critical areas, dangerously obsolete. Key statutes were written in eras that never anticipated the complexities of modern ocean governance, illegal unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, offshore renewable energy, or the kind of integrated marine spatial planning that now drives blue economy growth across comparable coastal nations.
Nigeria’s Sea Fisheries Act, for instance, dates back to 1992 and contains no provisions whatsoever for IUU fishing — a practice now widely recognised as one of the gravest threats to sustainable fisheries globally. While other nations have overhauled their fisheries laws repeatedly to address evolving sustainability principles, Nigeria’s statute remains frozen in time, leaving enforcement agencies without the legal tools to act decisively against poachers and illegal trawlers stripping the country’s maritime resources.
The problem, however, goes beyond outdated statutes. Nigeria’s maritime legal landscape is also riddled with agency conflict — competing mandates created, often inadvertently, by overlapping establishment acts. The Nigerian Ports Authority and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency have long operated across marginal jurisdictional fault lines, with inter-agency rivalries generating revenue losses and regulatory paralysis. These conflicts, rooted in the very acts that created these agencies, have led to inter-agency rivalry, loss of national revenue, and a significant drag on maritime sector progress.
Recent court decisions have begun to address some of these conflicts, though they also expose how deeply structural the problem is. In a landmark 2024 ruling, the Supreme Court of Nigeria held that navigable inland waterways fall within the exclusive legislative competence of the Federal Government, affirming the supremacy of the NIWA Act over conflicting state legislation and creating regulatory clarity for investors and operators in Nigeria’s maritime and inland waterways sector. The ruling settled a long-running dispute between the National Inland Waterways Authority and the Lagos State Waterways Authority over who holds regulatory power on federal waterways — a dispute that had created uncertainty for operators and chilled investment.
More recently, in January 2026, the Supreme Court addressed regulatory and statutory interpretation issues involving maritime administration and levies, reinforcing the doctrine that administrative agencies cannot expand their authority through policy or guidelines beyond what their enabling statute allows. The judgment is significant for LNG operators and maritime logistics providers, clarifying that levies lacking clear statutory backing cannot be validly imposed — a ruling that reduces the risk of the multiple, overlapping charges that have long frustrated maritime businesses operating in Nigerian waters.
At the port operations level, a Federal High Court ruling in May 2025 suspended the collection of a Practitioners Operating Fee imposed on freight forwarders by the Council for the Regulation of Freight Forwarding in Nigeria, holding that the imposition lacked sufficient legal backing — a decision that significantly affects port operations, maritime logistics, and economic activities within Nigeria’s blue economy framework. These court victories are important. But they are reactive, not proactive — firefighting after regulatory overreach has already damaged the operating environment. What Nigeria urgently needs, analysts say, is a comprehensive legislative overhaul that gets ahead of these conflicts rather than waiting for courts to resolve them years after the damage is done.
Dr Emeka Akabogu, a maritime lawyer and policy analyst, has stated that overlapping agency functions and regulatory inconsistencies in the sector continue to hinder investment and operational efficiency. His view is widely shared. The House Committee on Ports and Harbours has confirmed that a Nigerian Port Regulatory Agency Bill is in progress, aimed at streamlining the tangled web of overlapping mandates that currently fragment port governance.
Meanwhile, the human cost of legislative inaction is mounting. NIMASA once projected that Nigeria’s blue economy could generate over $20 billion annually, yet the gap between that potential and actual earnings remains vast. Nigeria continues to lose jobs and revenue to better-organised maritime economies, even as it holds the chair of the World Customs Organization Council — a seat of international maritime prestige that stands in sharp contrast to its domestic governance failures.
Billions in potential maritime earnings remain unrealised, undermining Nigeria’s bid to diversify from oil, with chronic underperformance threatening not only economic diversification but job creation.
The passage of a National Policy on Marine and Blue Economy was welcomed as a step forward. But policy documents, however well-crafted, cannot substitute for enforceable law. Nigeria’s National Assembly must move — urgently — to repeal obsolete maritime statutes, eliminate duplicative agency mandates, enact a comprehensive fisheries law fit for the 21st century, and establish a coordinated legislative framework that treats the blue economy as the national strategic asset it truly is.
Nigeria’s oceans are not the problem. Nigeria’s laws are.
Oyetola Woos Turkish Investors for Fisheries Sector, Vows to Protect Artisanal Fishers
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, has thrown Nigeria’s fisheries sector open to Turkish investment, insisting that any fresh capital coming into the industry must strengthen and not sideline the millions of Nigerians who depend on artisanal fishing for a living.
Oyetola made the pledge while receiving a delegation from Turkish fisheries and aquaculture firm CRD Impex, led by the company’s General Manager for Fisheries, Cem Tarhan, at his Abuja office. He told the investors the Federal Government was ready to create an investment-friendly climate for credible local and foreign players willing to bring capital, technology and modern value-chain solutions to the sector, on condition that such investment remains inclusive.
“We welcome investors who can bring capital, technology, expertise and modern value-chain solutions to the sector. However, investment must be inclusive and sustainable. It must complement and empower our artisanal fish producers, not undermine their livelihoods,” the Minister said
He listed inadequate infrastructure, poor access to modern fishing technology, weak cold-chain systems, limited processing and storage capacity, and gaps in market access as the major constraints holding back the sector, framing each as an opening for targeted investment rather than a dead end.
The Turkish team, which included CRD Impex founder Hanefi Cardak and Tetra Underwater Services founder Ersun Buyukgoze, toured key fisheries and aquaculture points around the country to size up the terrain first-hand. Stops included the Kirikiri Lighter Terminal in Lagos, the Ozumba Mbadiwe Fish Market in Lekki, and the Esuk Nsidung Beach Market, a major waterfront seafood hub in Calabar, Cross River State.
The Ministry described the visit as part of a broader push to attract serious investment into Nigeria’s blue economy while keeping the welfare of artisanal fishers central to that growth.
Nigeria Watch
The Turkish courtesy call lands squarely in the pattern this desk has tracked all year: big-ticket investment pledges for Nigeria’s waterways, paired with familiar assurances that the small operator won’t be crowded out. The test, as always, is what happens after the photo-op.
Nigeria’s artisanal fishing communities occupy the same economic space as the informal boat operators represented by WABOTAN and ATBOWATON, river- and creek-dependent Nigerians whose livelihoods rise or fall on decisions made far from the waterfront. The infrastructure gaps Oyetola cited which include, weak cold-chain systems, poor storage and limited market access, all mirror the exact complaints this desk has documented from inland waterway operators for years but modernisation announced from Abuja rarely reache the jetties.
Turkish capital chasing Nigerian fisheries and aquaculture is a genuinely new thread, distinct from the Strait of Hormuz shipping story or the CVFF disbursement saga this desk has followed closely. But the underlying question is the same one that has defined Oyetola’s tenure at the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy: will “inclusive investment” translate into contracts, cooperative partnerships and cold-chain infrastructure that artisanal operators can actually use or will it, like so many blue-economy pledges before it, stall at the courtesy-visit stage?
Waterways News will be watching for the first concrete CRD Impex commitment — site, timeline, or local partnership — as the marker of whether this one is different.
NPERA, NPA Open Technical Talks on Handover of Inland Dry Port Functions
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) and the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) have begun formal engagement on transferring inland dry port oversight to NPERA, marking the start of what both agencies describe as a critical phase in operationalising Nigeria’s new port regulatory framework.
At a management-level meeting between the two agencies, officials focused on the technical groundwork for the handover, chiefly how to draw clear lines of responsibility and avoid duplication among the government bodies with a stake in inland dry port administration.
NPERA’s Director-General/CEO, Dr Akutah Pius, framed the transition as flowing directly from the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, whom he credited with steering the process toward the sector’s broader development. Akutah was emphatic that NPERA could not carry out the transfer alone, and said the buy-in of every relevant stakeholder agency would be needed to see it through.
He indicated that the Ministry would stay central to coordinating the process even as specific mandates move to the agencies best placed to execute them. Akutah also pointed to the Minister’s earlier interventions during the NPERA Bill’s passage through the National Assembly, which he said had defused inter-agency friction and set the stage for the cooperation now underway.
Describing the purpose of the meeting, Akutah said it was meant to formally kick off the transfer of inland dry port responsibilities to NPERA in fulfilment of its statutory role as economic regulator of the ports sector. He singled out Section 51 of the NPERA Act as a provision that now needs to be put into practical effect to keep the transition orderly and ensure stakeholder roles are properly aligned.
To manage the process going forward, the NPERA boss proposed setting up a joint committee drawing in NPERA, NPA, the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), and the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy. He argued that inland dry ports matter well beyond the coastline. They extend maritime sector benefits into Nigeria’s hinterland and reinforce the country’s trade and logistics chain.
Responding on behalf of NPA, Managing Director Dr Abubakar Dantsoho welcomed the move and pledged his agency’s full operational and technical backing throughout the transition. He said the process had started on the right footing, and that NPA would furnish updated data on the current state of inland dry ports to inform further discussions, expressing confidence that continued engagement would help the agencies meet their shared objectives.
NPA’s Executive Director, Engr. Lekan Badmus, also commended NPERA for setting the collaboration in motion, calling the meeting a solid first step toward a smooth integration. He noted the two agencies have now moved into the technical phase of the exercise, with close attention being paid to eliminating overlapping functions.
Closing the meeting, Akutah said the proposed joint committee would reconvene with the Minister to seek further guidance and agree on next steps to keep the transition on track.
Nigeria Watch
This meeting is the first visible test of whether the NPERA Act’s promise of a rationalised port regulatory architecture can survive contact with Nigeria’s crowded agency landscape. Section 51’s transfer of inland dry port functions to NPERA looks straightforward on paper; in practice, it touches NPA’s traditional port administration turf, NIWA’s inland waterways mandate, and the Ministry’s coordinating role all at once, precisely the kind of overlapping jurisdiction that has bedevilled reform efforts elsewhere in the sector, most visibly in the long-running NIWA-LASWA tussle that only the Supreme Court could settle.
The proposed joint committee of NPERA, NPA, NIWA, and the Ministry, is a sensible mechanism, but Waterways News readers who have followed the CVFF disbursement saga know that Nigerian maritime governance has no shortage of well-designed committees whose outputs never quite reach implementation. What will matter is whether Akutah’s “technical phase” produces a binding timeline, not another round of goodwill statements.
For inland dry port operators and the hinterland trade corridors that depend on them, the stakes are practical: unclear jurisdiction between NPA and NPERA has historically meant slower cargo evacuation, duplicated levies, and uncertainty for freight forwarders planning routes away from the congested Lagos ports. If this transition is handled well, it strengthens the case for dry ports as genuine pressure valves for Apapa and Tin Can. If it stalls in inter-agency turf negotiation, it becomes one more entry in the gap between policy pronouncement and delivery that this desk continues to track.
Worth watching: whether Minister Oyetola’s office sets an explicit deadline when the committee reconvenes, and whether NIWA, whose inland waterways mandate intersects with dry port hinterland connectivity, gets more than a seat at the table.
Two More Tankers Struck in Strait of Hormuz as Attack Count Hits Five in a Week
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Two more tankers have been hit while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, leaving two seafarers with minor injuries and pushing the number of reported attacks or security incidents against commercial vessels in the waterway to at least five since 16 September.
The UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) centre said an inbound tanker was struck by an unidentified projectile on Monday. Two crew members sustained minor injuries, but the vessel stayed under its own power and continued to its next port, with no environmental impact reported.
Hours later, UKMTO issued a second alert after an outbound LPG tanker reported being struck by debris from unknown projectiles. All crew were reported safe and the vessel also continued its voyage. Authorities are investigating both incidents, and UKMTO has not attributed either attack to a specific actor.
The two strikes build on a Joint Maritime Information Center (JMIC) advisory covering three earlier attacks between 16 and 18 September, one of which saw a tanker’s hull breached by a projectile, sparking a fire. JMIC continues to rate the threat level in the strait as “severe,” citing a high likelihood of deliberate hostile action and pointing to a pattern of harassment by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — drone overflights, surveillance of merchant vessels and VHF hailing, alongside the direct attacks.
Traffic through the chokepoint remains sharply depressed. Only 17 commodity vessels were visibly transiting over the weekend, down from 37 the week before and against a pre-war daily average of roughly 125. That figure excludes vessels sailing with their AIS transponders switched off, and JMIC notes a persistent gap between visible and actual traffic.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigerian maritime stakeholders, the Hormuz crisis is no longer a distant Gulf story. It is a cost line. Every fresh escalation feeds directly into the war-risk insurance premiums and freight rates that Nigerian importers, refiners and shipping agents ultimately absorb, since global tanker and container capacity pulled off the Hormuz route tightens supply elsewhere and pushes rates up across long-haul trades, including those serving West African ports.
The renewed attacks also sharpen the stakes around Nigeria’s push for a stronger voice at the IMO Council table and its broader blue-economy diplomacy under Minister Adegboyega Oyetola. A sustained Gulf disruption is exactly the kind of systemic shock that tests whether Nigeria’s seat translates into influence over how global shipping risk, insurance and rerouting decisions are made, rather than Nigeria simply absorbing the downstream cost.
Locally, the episode is a reminder of the layered nature of “maritime security” as a policy word: the Deep Blue Project and Gulf of Guinea security architecture address piracy and armed robbery close to home, but Nigeria’s ports and shippers remain exposed to security failures thousands of kilometres away in the Gulf.
Waterways News will continue tracking how the Hormuz situation feeds into freight cost pressure at Nigerian ports and NIMASA’s public messaging on the issue.
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