Blue Economy
NSC Board Visits APM Terminals Apapa, Cites $600m Investment Pledge as Boost for Nigeria’s Trade Ambitions
NSC Board Visits APM Terminals Apapa, Cites $600m Investment Pledge as Boost for Nigeria’s Trade Ambitions
Regulator points to 30% export cargo growth, digital transformation as signs of maturing port ecosystem
By Ighoyota Onaibre| Waterways News
The Governing Board of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) has declared APM Terminals Apapa a benchmark for port operations in Nigeria, following a familiarisation visit to the Apapa facility that laid bare both the terminal’s progress and the regulator’s broader vision for the country’s port sector.
Leading the delegation, NSC Board Chairman Dr Ibrahim Shehu Shema used the occasion to reaffirm the Council’s commitment to its mandate as Nigeria’s port economic regulator, stressing that cross-sector collaboration remains the cornerstone of building a truly competitive maritime ecosystem.
“Most of what I have seen on this visit is quite impressive,” Shema said. “The way the organisations involve their stakeholders is commendable. It shows that government is very serious about generating revenue for this country through this sector, and there is no doubt that foreign investors are interested in committing even more resources.”
He said the Council would continue deepening engagement with terminal operators, shipping lines and shippers to position Nigeria as the dominant maritime hub for West and Central Africa — a goal he tied to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda.
Akutah: Export Growth and Dangote Refinery Signal a Trade Rebalancing
NSC Executive Secretary and CEO Dr Pius Akutah struck an optimistic tone on the trade balance question — long a structural concern in Nigerian maritime circles. He disclosed that export cargo volumes at APM Terminals Apapa have grown by approximately 30 per cent, calling the figure a harbinger of change.
“For too long, the country has operated largely as an importing nation, resulting in persistent deficits in the balance of payments,” Akutah said. “This gives us optimism that, in the coming years, Nigeria will achieve a more balanced trade position.”
He acknowledged that exports remain predominantly commodity-based, but identified the Dangote Refinery’s emerging petroleum product exports and the opportunities unlocked by the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) as catalysts for a more diversified export profile.
“With the Dangote Refinery now exporting petroleum products, we expect further progress. The manufacturing sector holds strong potential, particularly under AfCFTA, which provides a unified platform for trade across the continent. We are confident that Nigeria will soon expand its footprint in exporting manufactured goods across Africa,” he said.
On regulatory oversight, Akutah noted that many terminal operators are aligning with NSC directives to modernise facilities and embrace technology — progress he described as consistent with the vision of the Honourable Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, CON.
$600m Reinvestment Proposal Described as a Vote of Confidence
Perhaps the most consequential disclosure of the visit came from Akutah’s confirmation that APM Terminals has tabled a proposal to invest an additional $600 million in its Nigerian operations — a commitment the NSC chief described as a strong signal of investor confidence at a time the Federal Government is actively courting foreign direct investment.
“At a time when the Federal Government is actively seeking foreign direct investment, it is reassuring to see companies already operating in Nigeria reinvesting and expanding their commitments,” Akutah said. “It is truly heartening and signals a promising period for the country.”
Terminal MD Points to Digital Overhaul
APM Terminals Apapa Managing Director Kamal Alhraishat used the occasion to highlight the terminal’s shift to electronic data interchange (EDI) systems — replacing manual, paper-based processes with digital platforms that enable the seamless exchange of standardised trade documents including invoices, bills of lading and cargo status updates.
“By eliminating paper-based processes, we have enhanced both efficiency and accuracy, while ensuring faster and more transparent communication between the terminal, shipping lines and shippers,”
Alhraishat said, adding that the company remains committed to ongoing infrastructure investment and technological innovation in support of Nigeria’s trade ambitions.
Nigeria Watch
The NSC board visit to APM Terminals Apapa carries more than ceremonial weight. It comes at a pivotal moment in the concession reform cycle, with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) still navigating the concession renewal process for several terminals — a process in which operator performance benchmarks will be central.
APM Terminals Apapa’s reported 30 per cent export cargo growth is a metric worth watching closely. It corroborates narratives around the Dangote Refinery’s impact on Nigeria’s outbound freight market, and hints at a structural shift in the cargo mix at Apapa that regulators and terminal planners will need to account for.
The $600 million reinvestment proposal, if formalised, would represent one of the largest single private commitments to Nigerian port infrastructure in recent memory — and would significantly strengthen the case for Apapa’s continued relevance against the growing competitive pressure from the Lekki Deep Sea Port.
For the NSC, the visit reinforces its posture as an active regulator — one that is auditing performance, not merely adjudicating disputes. That positioning, amplified by Executive Secretary Akutah’s references to the AfCFTA and export diversification, suggests the Council is sharpening its strategic framing ahead of what promises to be a consequential season of port sector policy decisions.
Waterways News | Maritime | Ports | Blue Economy
Blue Economy
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Nigeria’s tourism sector needs urgent policy reform, stronger collaboration and fresh investment to compete globally and water transport operators who are members of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) want that conversation to include the boats, ferries and waterway routes that move millions of Nigerians and could move even more tourists.
That was the underlying idea raised by Comrade Babatope Fajemirokun National President of Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) represented by Chief Raymond Gold, National PRO of WABOTAN, at the ninth Nigeria Tourism Investors Forum and Exhibition (NTIFE), held over two days in Abuja under the theme “Tourism Transformation Through Collaboration, Policy Alignment and Investment.” The events took place between Thursday 30 to Friday 31 of July 2026. Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN), is a corporate member of FTAN
The forum drew policymakers, investors, tourism operators and development partners.
FTAN President Dr Aliyu Badaki used his welcome remarks to press the Federal Government to overhaul tourism-related laws and regulatory frameworks that he said breed duplication, institutional conflict and legal uncertainty for operators. He said the federation’s newly developed Tourism Transformation Mandate (TTM) is meant to unify every segment of the tourism value chain.
Babatope Fajemirokun, through Chief Gold emphasizes the fact that this value chain for Nigeria’s coastal cities, riverine communities and inland waterway corridors, runs directly through water transport.
Badaki argued that fragmented efforts and weak coordination have held back the sector for years, and called for regulation that enables rather than inhibits growth.
Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, who declared the forum open, described tourism as a strategic pillar for economic diversification. She said government cannot finance tourism transformation alone and that private capital must lead, with government’s role limited to creating an enabling environment for investors.
In his keynote address, Sen. Ibrahim Ida called for stronger collaboration among government, the private sector and host communities, saying tourism can generate jobs, foreign exchange and diversification if properly harnessed.
Panel sessions, moderated by Justina Ovat of Calabar Hospitality House Limited, featured Nigeria Tourism Development Authority (NTDA) Director-General Dr Ola Awakan, who called for policy consistency and investor-friendly incentives, and Dr Philip Maga of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), who flagged the need for stronger workforce training to close skills gaps across the hospitality industry.
Hospitality entrepreneur Lanre Balogun urged investors to prioritise disciplined, long-term planning.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria’s water transport sector, NTIFE’s reform push is not a side conversation. Rather, it is a direct stakeholder issue. FTAN’s corporate membership includes Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) and the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters of Nigeria (ATBOWATON), both drawn from the ranks of operators who run the boats, ferries and water taxis that already serve Lagos’s creeks, the Niger Delta’s riverine towns and coastal leisure routes. Their presence inside FTAN means the federation’s demand for regulatory clarity and coordinated policy carries an inland-waterways and blue-economy dimension that goes beyond hotels and heritage sites.
That matters because water tourism sits at an awkward regulatory junction in Nigeria. A tourist boat operator answers not only to tourism authorities but potentially to NIWA, LASWA (in Lagos) and NIMASA on safety standards, and state government tourism boards, precisely the kind of overlapping jurisdiction Badaki described as breeding “duplication, institutional conflicts… and operational uncertainty.”
The 2026 Supreme Court ruling affirming NIWA’s regulatory authority over inland waterways nationwide, following the NIWA-LASWA jurisdictional dispute, is a live example of the kind of institutional friction FTAN’s Tourism Transformation Mandate is meant to resolve, at least on the tourism side.
Musawa’s call for private capital to lead tourism investment also lands squarely on water transport operators’ desks. Vessel acquisition, safety retrofitting, jetty infrastructure and life-jacket compliance all require capital that small-scale operators, including WABOTAN’s member-cooperative structure, have struggled to access, a gap that echoes the long-running CVFF disbursement failure in the cabotage shipping sector and underscores why financing bottlenecks are not unique to cargo and passenger shipping alone.
If FTAN’s push for policy alignment succeeds in drawing water transport formally into Nigeria’s tourism investment architecture, operators like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON could gain a stronger claim to inclusion in infrastructure programmes such as the Omi-Eko electric ferry project and LASWA’s ferry safety development initiatives, turning routine commuter water transport into a recognised leisure and tourism asset, not just a transportation afterthought.
For a sector accustomed to being regulated but rarely consulted, this call by Babatope Fajemirokun is a modest but meaningful call.
Blue Economy
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated its commitment to improving the welfare of Nigerian seafarers, pledging deeper collaboration with the Mission to Seafarers (MtS) as part of ongoing reforms in the sector.
The commitment came as the Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, received a delegation from the Mission to Seafarers at the agency’s Lagos headquarters, led by the Chairman of MtS Lagos, Chief Adebayo Sarumi, alongside the Regional Director for Africa, Reverend Cedric Rautenbach.
Speaking on behalf of the DG, NIMASA’s Executive Director for Operations, Engr. Fatai Taiye Adeyemi, said the agency would continue tightening certification processes, expanding capacity development programmes, and strengthening welfare policies for seafarers both at sea and in port, in partnership with stakeholders such as the Mission to Seafarers.
Chief Sarumi commended NIMASA’s ongoing reforms and expressed confidence that closer collaboration would translate into tangible welfare gains for Nigerian maritime professionals. Reverend Rautenbach, for his part, clarified that while the Mission to Seafarers and Nigeria’s Port Welfare Committees pursue a shared objective which is the the wellbeing of seafarers. The two bodies operate on distinct, complementary mandates, making coordination between them essential to strengthening on-ground support at Nigerian ports.
The meeting covered decent working conditions, welfare service gaps, and areas of mutual collaboration. NIMASA said the engagement aligns with its obligations under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006, and forms part of a broader push toward stronger regulatory oversight and stakeholder engagement on seafarer rights.
Nigeria Watch
Beyond the courtesy-visit optics, this meeting lands on a fault line that has dogged Nigerian seafarer welfare for years: fragmented institutional responsibility. NIMASA regulates and certifies; Port Welfare Committees are meant to deliver frontline services at berths; the Mission to Seafarers, a faith-based international NGO, fills gaps neither statutory body always reaches. These gaps are chaplaincy, shore leave support, emergency assistance, and advocacy for stranded or abandoned crew.
Rautenbach’s point about “distinct but complementary mandates” is worth pressing on, because in practice that distinction has often meant duplication in some areas and total absence in others.
Nigerian seafarers have long reported patchy access to welfare facilities at ports like Apapa, Tin Can Island, and Onne. Such reports include inconsistent internet access, poor rest facilities, and slow response to cases of wage default or abandonment by errant shipowners, issues MWUN has repeatedly raised in past CBA compliance disputes.
NIMASA’s MLC 2006 framing is the right one, but enforcement, not policy language, remains the industry’s persistent complaint. If this renewed MtS partnership is to mean more than another photo-op at headquarters, it should translate into a documented, port-by-port welfare service map: which ports have functioning seafarer centres, which Port Welfare Committees are actually active, and where the Mission to Seafarers’ Flying Angel network is present versus where seafarers are effectively on their own.
Nigerian crews calling at their own national ports deserve better than welfare support that depends on which NGO happens to be in town.
NIMASA Bets on Youths to Power Nigeria’s Blue Giant Ambitions
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated that the country’s push to become Africa’s “Blue Giant” will rise or fall on how well it equips young Nigerians for the blue economy, with the agency’s Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, describing youth capacity-building as the engine room of the National Marine and Blue Economy Policy.
Mobereola made the point at the 10th Taiwo Afolabi Annual Maritime (TAAM) Lecture at the University of Lagos, where he was represented by NIMASA’s Director of Reforms Coordination and Blue Economy, Mrs Nneka Obianyor. He linked the agency’s youth agenda directly to President Bola Tinubu’s economic diversification drive, noting that the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, has directed NIMASA to prioritise skills development and job creation for young Nigerians in the sector.
Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Dayo Mobereola
To back that up, Mobereola pointed to a cluster of NIMASA programmes already running: the long-standing Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP), a newly launched Blue Economy Accelerator Initiative, skills acquisition centres spread across the six geopolitical zones, and the rollout of Institutes of Maritime Studies in select Nigerian universities. He framed these as deliberate interventions meant to build capacity, generate employment, and spur innovation among the country’s youth population.
Separately, NIMASA used the UNILAG engagement to go beyond ceremony, running an interactive session with doctoral and master’s students on shipping development, maritime logistics, cabotage implementation, and maritime labour regulation. The session was led by the agency’s Director of Cabotage Services, Ms Gloria Anyasodo, and was pitched as part of a broader effort to strengthen ties between academia and industry in tackling the maritime sector’s practical challenges.
Nigeria Watch
The optics are good; the test, as always, will be delivery. NIMASA has no shortage of youth-facing initiatives on paper. The NSDP has existed for years, skills centres have been announced before, and Institutes of Maritime Studies have been floated in past budget cycles. What’s new here is the Blue Economy Accelerator Initiative, and it arrives with the same vagueness that has dogged similar rollouts: no disclosed funding envelope, no timeline for the six geopolitical zone centres to be fully operational, and no public framework for how graduates of these programmes are absorbed into shipping, logistics, or cabotage jobs afterward.
That absorption question matters more than any lecture-hall soundbite. Nigeria’s maritime training pipeline, from MAN Oron to the seafarer certification backlog that this publication has tracked, already produces more qualified hands than the domestic fleet and port ecosystem can currently employ. This is a mismatch tied directly to the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund’s decades-long disbursement failure and the slow pace of indigenous vessel acquisition. Training more youths without fixing that bottleneck simply shifts the frustration downstream, from unemployment to underemployment.
There’s also an accountability gap in how these announcements are made. They are usually made through a lecture delegation rather than a costed policy document. If NIMASA and the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy are serious about youths driving the Blue Giant ambition, the next disclosure should include enrolment numbers, the accelerator’s funding source, and most critically, the placement data showing how many NSDP and skills-centre graduates have actually found sea-time or shore-based maritime employment. Until then, this remains a well-intentioned promise stacked on top of several older, still-unfulfilled promises.
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