Blue Economy
LAGOS WATERWAYS: State Unveils Lekki Water Taxi, Targets Two Million Monthly Passengers
LAGOS WATERWAYS: State Unveils Lekki Water Taxi, Targets Two Million Monthly Passengers
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News Correspondent,
Lagos, May 13, 2026
Introduction of High-Speed Corridor Service Anchors Sanwo-Olu’s Third-Year Transport Reform Record
The Lagos State Ministry of Transportation has unveiled an ambitious 2026 waterways expansion programme anchored by the introduction of a dedicated Lekki Water Taxi initiative, signalling a decisive push to transform the state’s inland water transport from a supplementary option into a mainstream urban mobility solution.
The disclosure came at the 2026 Ministerial Press Briefing held to mark the third year of Governor Babajide Olusola Sanwo-Olu’s second term in office, where the Commissioner for Transportation, Mr. Oluwaseun Osiyemi, outlined the administration’s scorecard on multimodal transport and presented a forward-looking agenda for the remainder of the year.
Lekki Water Taxi: What Is Being Proposed
The Lekki Water Taxi initiative is designed to introduce dedicated high-speed water taxi services along key waterway corridors within the Lekki axis — one of Lagos’s fastest-growing residential and commercial districts. The corridor, which connects densely populated communities along the Lekki Peninsula to the Lagos Island business hub, is among the most traffic-congested routes in the metropolis, making it a strategic priority for waterway intervention.
Although specific vessel specifications and terminal locations were not disclosed at the briefing, the initiative is understood to be part of a broader effort to provide scheduled, point-to-point water transport services as a credible alternative to road travel — particularly for commuters navigating the chronic gridlock that defines the Lekki-Victoria Island corridor during peak hours.
The water taxi model, when fully operationalised, is expected to significantly cut commute times for residents travelling between Lekki Phases 1 and 2, Ajah, and the commercial centres of Victoria Island and Lagos Island. Industry observers note that a well-managed water taxi service on this route could serve as a proof-of-concept for replicating the model on other high-density waterway corridors across the state.
Near Two Million Monthly Passengers on Lagos Waterways
Commissioner Osiyemi disclosed that Lagos waterways are now serving close to two million passengers monthly — a milestone that underscores both the growing public appetite for water transport and the cumulative impact of infrastructure investments made under the current administration.
The figure represents a substantial increase from earlier ridership benchmarks, with the Lagos Ferry Services Corporation (LAGFERRY) having previously recorded an average daily throughput of 2,000 passengers in 2025. The aggregation of LAGFERRY operations, private ferry operators licensed under the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA), and emerging water taxi services has collectively pushed monthly usage toward the two-million mark.
The Commissioner attributed the growth to a combination of expanded route coverage, improved safety standards, and sustained public confidence in water transport following the introduction of mandatory life jacket distribution at ferry terminals across the state.
Cowry Card Integration: Linking Water to Rail and Road
A significant element of the 2026 waterways agenda is the planned integration of ferry and water taxi services into the state’s unified Cowry Card payment ecosystem. The contactless smart card, which already interconnects Lagos Rail Mass Transit’s Blue Line and Red Line services with the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) fleet, is set to be extended to cover ferry terminals — enabling commuters to use a single payment instrument across all three transport modes.
The integration is considered a crucial step toward seamless intermodal mobility in a city where many commuters combine bus, rail, and water transport within a single journey. For maritime operators and terminal managers, the Cowry Card rollout will also generate real-time ridership data that can improve scheduling and fleet deployment decisions.
OMI-EKO Electric Ferry and the Green Transition
Alongside the Lekki Water Taxi, the ministry highlighted the OMI-EKO electric ferry initiative as a cornerstone of its sustainability agenda. The programme, which introduces zero-emission electric vessels into the Lagos waterways fleet, reflects a deliberate alignment between the state’s transport expansion goals and broader environmental commitments.
The push toward electric ferries and cleaner propulsion technologies positions Lagos as an early mover on green maritime transition among Nigerian states, and mirrors global trends in urban waterway transport where cities such as Oslo, Amsterdam, and San Francisco have pioneered electric ferry deployment. For LASWA and maritime regulators, the OMI-EKO programme will also test the operational and maintenance infrastructure needed to support electric vessel fleets at scale within a West African urban context.
Safety Campaigns and Life Jacket Distribution
The ministry also reported sustained progress on water transport safety, with widespread life jacket distribution at ferry terminals forming the centrepiece of ongoing safety campaigns. Nigeria’s inland waterways have historically recorded preventable fatalities attributable to the absence of personal flotation devices, making the distribution programme both a regulatory and humanitarian priority.
The safety drive complements the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and the National Maritime Safety Administration’s (NIMASA’s) own vessel safety inspection mandates, and will be critical to building the passenger trust required to sustain the ridership growth trajectory the state is targeting.
Modernisation of Ferry Terminals
Commissioner Osiyemi confirmed that ferry terminal modernisation remains a priority for 2026, with upgrades planned to improve passenger processing capacity, berthing facilities, and real-time scheduling displays at major terminals. While specific terminal locations undergoing upgrades were not itemised at the briefing, the modernisation drive is expected to address longstanding infrastructure gaps that have historically undermined service reliability.
Improved terminals will also support the planned integration of the water taxi service, which will require dedicated berthing infrastructure distinct from standard ferry operations.
Technology Upgrades Across the Transport Ecosystem
Beyond waterways specifically, the Commissioner highlighted technology-driven efficiency gains across the broader transport network. These include the E-Call Up system for truck scheduling — a digital queuing platform aimed at reducing congestion at port access roads — and Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras deployed at strategic intersections to improve traffic enforcement and flow.
These upgrades, while road-focused, have direct relevance to port logistics and maritime trade facilitation, as smoother truck movement between the Apapa and Tin Can Island port complexes and the wider Lagos road network reduces dwell time and lowers cargo handling costs for importers and exporters.
Nigeria Watch: What the Lekki Water Taxi Means for the Blue Economy
The announcement of the Lekki Water Taxi initiative is more than a Lagos transport story — it is a bellwether moment for Nigeria’s inland and urban waterway economy.
With Lagos Harbour and the surrounding waterways sitting at the intersection of the country’s busiest cargo port complex and its most populous urban agglomeration, the commercialisation of water taxi services represents a tangible extension of the blue economy concept into everyday urban life. It signals to federal policymakers, private investors, and development finance institutions that Nigerian waterways can generate sustained commercial revenue beyond cargo transit and industrial use.
For the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, the Lagos model — if it delivers on ridership and safety targets — offers a replicable template for other coastal and riverine states including Rivers, Delta, Bayelsa, Cross River, and Akwa Ibom, where inland waterway potential remains largely untapped.
NIWA, which holds the federal mandate for inland waterway development and route licensing, will be watching the Lekki corridor closely. A successful water taxi operation on a high-density urban route could strengthen the case for accelerating private sector participation in waterway transport under NIWA’s licensing framework, and provide evidence to justify increased capital allocation to jetty and channel maintenance.
For NIMASA, the expansion of passenger vessel operations in a major urban market reinforces the need for robust vessel safety certification standards and crew competency requirements specifically calibrated for high-frequency, short-haul urban ferry and water taxi operations — a regulatory sub-segment that has historically received less attention than deep-sea and offshore shipping.
The roll-out of the Cowry Card across water transport is also worth monitoring from a fintech and maritime logistics perspective. Digital ticketing and payment systems, when properly integrated, generate the transaction data and commercial discipline necessary to attract institutional investment into waterway infrastructure — a funding gap that has constrained development across Nigeria’s inland waterway network for decades.
Ultimately, Lagos is betting that the water is the road. If the Lekki Water Taxi launches on schedule and meets its ridership projections, it will mark a watershed in Nigerian urban maritime history.
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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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