Editor's Choice
Rising Ferry Fares Push Lagos Commuters Back to the Roads
Rising Ferry Fares Push Lagos Commuters Back to the Roads
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Commuters in Lagos are increasingly deserting inland water transportation in favour of road travel, as steep hikes in ferry fares make longer waterway routes an unaffordable option for many residents.
Passengers who spoke to Waterways News on Friday at the Marina Jetty in CMS said the rising cost of water transportation has discouraged patronage, particularly on extended routes such as CMS to Badagry and CMS to Ikorodu.
The Apapa–CMS route, they noted, still attracts strong ridership because it allows passengers to sidestep the chronic gridlock on the Marine Bridge. Even so, fares on that short crossing have climbed steadily, from N500 to N700, and now to N1,000.
Longer trips have been hit even harder. A one-way journey from CMS to Badagry now costs about N10,000, while commuters heading to Porto-Novo in neighbouring Benin Republic pay as much as N12,000.
Passengers say these fares far outstrip equivalent road fares, tilting the balance back toward road transport despite the traffic headaches it brings.
Responding to the concerns, the Chairman of the Lagos chapter of the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters of Nigeria (ATBOWATON), Comrade Saheed Lawal, attributed the fare increases to the soaring cost of petrol and rising spare parts prices. Lawal said fuel access remains a major operational bottleneck, with only one official boat fuelling point on Lagos waterways, situated at the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) headquarters in Falomo. He explained that a round trip from CMS to Falomo solely to refuel burns through roughly 10 litres of petrol, pushing many operators to instead buy fuel in jerrycans from filling stations around Marina, at a higher cost.
He said the combined pressure of expensive fuel, climbing maintenance costs, and limited refuelling infrastructure has left operators with little room to lower fares, a squeeze that is now translating into falling passenger numbers across the state’s waterway network.
Nigeria Watch
The fare crisis at CMS Jetty is a pointed illustration of a structural problem that has long trailed Lagos’s inland waterways sector, an operating environment that pushes costs onto commuters faster than it builds the infrastructure to contain them.
LASWA’s single official fuelling point at Falomo is a case in point. For an operator running the CMS–Badagry corridor, the detour to refuel adds fuel consumption, time, and wear before a single paying passenger boards. That an authority tasked with regulating and growing water transport has not scaled its own fuelling infrastructure to match ridership growth speaks to a broader pattern of the state investing in jetties and franchise routes while leaving the supporting logistics, fuel access chief among them, to catch up later, if at all.
The episode also sharpens the case for the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) and similar financing windows to widen their reach beyond deep-sea cabotage vessels to inland and intra-city ferry operators. Boat owners citing spare parts costs and maintenance strain as drivers of fare increases are, in effect, describing a capital access problem — one that a functioning CVFF disbursement window, or a dedicated inland waterways financing facility, could directly address by lowering the cost of fleet renewal and upkeep.
There is also a safety dimension worth flagging. When fares push commuters off ferries and onto informal, unregulated road alternatives, or onto overloaded boats run by operators cutting corners to stay competitive, the result is rarely just an economic story, it becomes a safety one, feeding into the accident patterns NIWA and LASWA have struggled to contain on Lagos waterways in recent years.
For a state government positioning water transport as a serious pillar of Lagos’s transport mix and, by extension, Nigeria’s blue economy ambitions under the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, the CMS Jetty fare complaints are a signal that affordability and fuel logistics need to be treated as core policy problems, not operator-level grievances to be managed informally.
Nigeria’s Port Boom Is Outpacing Its Capacity, Dantsoho Tells World Ports Conference
Dantsoho Pitches Nigeria’s Ports to Global Investors in London, Says Lekki’s Capacity Is Exhausted
By Emamuzou Akatugba | Waterways News | London
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Dr Abubakar Dantsoho, has told global port investors that Nigeria’s fast-growing cargo volumes make the country’s ports one of Africa’s most compelling investment opportunities. He said the Tinubu administration has put investor-friendly policies in place.
Dantsoho spoke on Tuesday at the IAPH World Ports Conference in London, which runs from November 3 to 6 at Olympia. He addressed a select group of maritime investors. He is Vice-President of the International Association of Ports and Harbors (IAPH) and Chairman of the Port Management Association of West and Central Africa (PMAWCA).
He said Nigeria’s population, rapid urbanisation and infrastructure gaps are what make the opportunity attractive. He argued that governments across Africa cannot alone fund bigger and deeper seaports, so private investment must move in quickly.
“The investment needed in ports to meet this expansion and growth can only happen if the requisite private investment is attracted and retained,” he said. He added that President Tinubu “has created the enabling atmosphere” for this
Dantsoho said Nigeria’s population has grown from about 45 million at independence in 1960 to over 260 million. In his words, the country needs capacity to receive bigger import vessels and to move higher export volumes.
His strongest example was the Lekki Deep Sea Port. It was funded with Chinese backing and built by China Harbour at a cost of $1.6 billion. He said it was commissioned only about three years ago, yet its capacity “has been exhausted”.
“Clearly, we need more capacity to be able to contain the volumes,” he said. He added that the NPA is pleased to be capturing more cargo, since rising volumes are what lift port revenue.
He also said most cargo arriving in West Africa, largely from China, ends up in the Nigerian market. He compared Nigeria’s population with Ghana (34 million), Côte d’Ivoire (32 million), Benin Republic (14 million) and Togo (9 million).
Other reports from the conference quote Dantsoho saying federal reforms have lifted Nigeria’s exports by about 25 per cent in two years, across oil and non-oil goods. He reportedly also cited two Nigerian ports in the World Bank’s top 20 global rankings, and a Single Window system the NPA developed in 2025 with a Singaporean firm.
NIGERIA WATCH
Capacity is now the story. A $1.6bn flagship port that is already full is the clearest sign yet that Nigeria’s problem has moved from attracting ships to handling them. It strengthens the case for the new deep seaport approvals (Badagry, Olokola, Ibom, Bakassi and Bonny) that have so far been announced faster than they have been built. Investors in London will want timelines, not just approvals.
Retaining investors is harder than attracting them. Dantsoho himself used the phrase “attracted and retained”. Concession renewal anxieties, regulatory overlap among agencies, and the Strait of Hormuz crisis’s effect on freight rates and war-risk insurance all weigh on retention. These are the questions investors will ask after the speech.
Where do the small operators fit? The pitch is about big terminals and big capital. Informal inland waterway operators, represented by WABOTAN and ATBOWATON, remain absent from the conversation.
Waterways News will keep asking how port-led growth and the NPA’s assessment of inland dry ports will translate into jetties, safety and livelihoods for the informal inland waterway operators.
Nigeria Unveils Home-Built ADX-Barra 200 Autonomous Vessel at AFRIDEX 2026
Arridex, DICON joint venture Helagon delivers country’s first indigenously developed unmanned surface vessels%
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
Nigeria has unveiled its first indigenously developed autonomous surface vessel, the ADX-Barra 200. Arridex Group, formerly RusselSmith Group, built it through Helagon, its defence joint venture with the Defence Industries Corporation of Nigeria (DICON).
The vessel was unveiled on 26 October at the inaugural Africa International Defence Exhibition (AFRIDEX 2026) at Eko Atlantic, Lagos. The exhibition ran from 26 to 29 October.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu was represented by Senate President Godswill Akpabio. He said the administration prioritises defence industry growth because a nation is more secure when it can build and maintain its own capability. He described the vessel as that capability taking shape, designed and built by local engineers in partnership with DICON, and said it deserves government support and the confidence of the armed forces.
ADX-Barra 200
Arridex Group CEO Kayode Adeleke presented the vessel. He said Helagon was set up to design autonomous systems and that the ADX-Barra 200 is the result. For the forces that will use it, he called it a force multiplier.
The ADX-Barra 200 is one of two platforms in the ADX-Barra series launched at the exhibition. The other is the ADX-Barra 100. Arridex says both were designed, built and integrated in Nigeria by its engineers.
Adeleke tied the platforms to Gulf of Guinea security. He said the region’s waters carry its trade, support its coastal communities and hold much of its energy wealth, and that protecting them calls for capability the region can build, sustain and improve itself. He invited the armed services and other stakeholders to arrange demonstrations and to help shape later generations of the vessels.
Others at the unveiling included Lagos State Deputy Governor Dr Obafemi Hamzat and the Minister of State for Defence, Dr Bello Matawalle. DICON Director-General Major General Babatunde Ibrahim Alaya, Helagon Chief Operating Officer Engr. Precious Omo-Agege and Arridex senior management were also present.
Arridex has not published the vessel’s technical specifications, including its length, endurance, payload and sensors. Both vessels remained on display at the exhibition.
NIGERIA WATCH
A home-built answer to a long-standing maritime problem: Nigeria’s waters have long needed more patrol capacity than its platforms and budgets can supply. A locally designed vessel that “can be supported, adapted and improved by the team that made it,” as Arridex puts it, addresses one persistent weakness. Imported hulls and systems often sit idle for want of spares, support and trained hands.
The questions that matter next: Unveilings are not deployments. The Navy, NIMASA’s Deep Blue Project and other agencies will want to know the vessel’s range, endurance, sensors and sea-state limits. They will also want to know whether it can work in the Gulf of Guinea. Until Arridex publishes specifications and arranges trials, the “game-changing” claim remains the company’s own.
Beyond defence: Waterways News readers should watch whether this technology filters into civil uses such as inland waterway surveillance, anti-vandalism patrols and search and rescue. The country’s inland operators, including those represented by WABOTAN and ATBOWATON, face insecurity and safety gaps that policy announcements have not closed. Local manufacturing capacity matters to them only if it eventually reaches the waterways where they work.
The accountability test: The industrial-policy argument is sound. It is build locally and maintain locally. It will be judged by procurement, deployment and sustained operation, not by launch-day speeches.
Editor's Choice
Australia Bars Repeat-Offender Bulk Carrier for 90 Days Over Falsified Crew Rest Records
Australia Bars Repeat-Offender Bulk Carrier for 90 Days Over Falsified Crew Rest Records
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Australian maritime authorities have banned the Marshall Islands-flagged bulk carrier Wooyang Venus from its ports and waters for 90 days. Inspectors found that the ship’s crew work and rest-hour records had been deliberately falsified to hide excessive working hours.
The Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA) boarded the vessel at the Port of Newcastle on 29 October after a complaint under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC). Its port state control inspection found that the records did not match the hours the crew actually worked. The ship left Newcastle on 31 October for Korea, and the ban took effect afterwards.
This is the vessel’s third brush with Australian enforcement in under three years. AMSA detained it in August 2026 when crew hours were neither properly recorded nor monitored. It was first detained in December 2023, after a complaint from the International Transport Workers’ Federation (ITF).
That inspection found falsified hours records, poor food provisions and an allegation that the master had assaulted a crew member. AMSA’s annual MLC report says the operator then submitted a corrective action plan covering repatriation, better provisions and training on rest-hour compliance. The latest findings suggest those measures did not take hold.
AMSA Executive Director for Maritime Safety and Environmental Compliance, Greg Witherall, said falsifying records meant to protect seafarers undermines both crew welfare and ship safety. He warned that fatigue dulls judgement and slows reaction times, raising the risk of collisions, groundings and injuries, particularly during navigation and watchkeeping.
The ban was imposed under Section 246 of Australia’s Navigation Act 2012. AMSA cited the deliberate falsification, the repeated breaches and doubts over the effectiveness of the owner’s and operator’s safety management systems.
Nigeria Watch
The case matters for Nigeria for three reasons:
Records are the enforcement tool. Fatigue rules only work if rest-hour logs can be trusted. Australia treated falsification as a safety-system failure, not a paperwork lapse, and banned the ship rather than detaining it again.
Repeat offenders need escalating penalties. Two detentions and a corrective plan did not change this operator’s behaviour. Nigerian port state control should ask whether its own follow-up on repeat deficiencies has real consequences.
Seafarer welfare is a Nigerian issue. Nigerian seafarers serve on foreign-flagged ships, and those working boats and ferries on domestic waters face fatigue and welfare gaps too, often with no records at all.
The MLC regime Australia is enforcing shows what accountability looks like. It is the benchmark NIMASA and the inland regulators should be measured against, and one this publication will keep pressing.
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