Security & Safety
Blood Cargo: How Thousands of Illegal Weapons Flow Through Nigeria’s Ports — And the Men Who Let Them In
PART ONE: The Guns, The Ships, and the Shadow Network
WATERWAYSNEWS.NG | Ports & Security | Investigative Report Lagos/Abuja — February 2026
The wooden crates arrived at Tincan Island Port looking unremarkable — just another shipment of building materials. Listed on the manifest as plaster of Paris cement, the 20-foot container cleared preliminary checks and moved deeper into the terminal. It was only when Customs officers cracked open the bags that the truth emerged: packed inside 516 sacks of white powder were 440 pump-action rifles, their barrels oiled and ready for use.
That 2017 discovery — which eventually led to a landmark court conviction — is just one chapter in a far larger and more disturbing story: a story of industrial-scale weapons trafficking that exploits Nigeria’s ports, corrupts its officials, and feeds the violence tearing communities apart across the country.
1,599 Guns and a Handover That Tells a Bigger Story
On a Thursday morning in early 2026, officials of the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) gathered at the Federal Operations Unit (FOU) Zone “A” in Ikeja, Lagos, for a formal handover ceremony. On one side stood Customs officers. On the other, representatives of the National Centre for the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons (NCCSALW), acting on behalf of National Security Adviser Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, who was represented by Johnson Kokumo, the NCCSALW Director General.
The inventory was sobering: 1,599 assorted firearms and 2,298 live cartridges, all seized during anti-smuggling operations. The weapons were transferred to NCCSALW for secure custody, ensuring they could not find their way back onto Nigerian streets or into the hands of the bandits and insurgents who have made whole regions of the country ungovernable.
The Comptroller-General of Customs used the occasion to highlight a significant legal milestone — the successful prosecution of Suit No. FHC/L/339C/2018 before the Federal High Court in Lagos. The court convicted Great James Oil and Gas Limited, Ifeuwa Moses Christ, and Emeka Umeh Festus, also known as Amankwa, on eight separate counts of arms importation offences. It was, officials declared, proof that the system could work.
But for many security analysts watching from the sidelines, one conviction offers thin comfort against the tide.
A Country Drowning in Illegal Guns
To understand why a handover of 1,599 firearms matters — and yet feels insufficient — one must understand the sheer scale of the crisis. Security researchers estimate that Nigeria may account for as much as 70 percent of the illicit small arms and light weapons circulating across West Africa. With an estimated 500 million illegal weapons on the continent, that figure points to over 350 million inside Nigeria’s borders alone.
The geography is part of the problem. Nigeria’s Minister of Interior has publicly acknowledged over 1,499 irregular entry points into the country, compared to just 84 official border crossings. In Adamawa State alone, approximately 25 illegal routes cut across the borders with neighbouring countries. The ECOWAS Protocol on free movement — designed to promote regional integration — has in practice also created corridors that arms traffickers exploit with ease.
But land borders tell only part of the story. Nigeria’s seaports — Apapa, Tincan Island, Onne, Calabar — have increasingly become entry points for military-grade weapons disguised as legitimate commercial cargo. The weapons do not walk themselves in. They need help.
Inside the Smuggling Playbook: How Guns Hide in Plain Sight
The methods are as varied as they are brazen. Weapons have been found hidden inside bags of cement, buried behind legitimate goods in 40-foot shipping containers, and declared under entirely false manifest descriptions. A favourite technique is to mix contraband with high-volume, low-scrutiny commodities — bulk goods whose weight and packaging offer natural camouflage.
The Tincan Island case is textbook. A clearing and forwarding agent, Emeka Umeh Festus, had used cloned documents in the name of Great James Oil and Gas Limited to obtain import paperwork from the Nigeria Customs Service. The weapons — sourced from Turkey — were arranged by Ifeuwa Moses Christ, who coordinated the overseas leg of the operation while local agents managed port logistics. They very nearly succeeded.
The July 2024 seizure at Onne Port in Port Harcourt followed a strikingly similar pattern. Customs officers intercepted 844 rifles — including 764 Tomahawk Jojef Magnum Black Pump Action Rifles and 10 Verney Caron Gunmakers models — alongside 112,500 rounds of live ammunition, all inside a container that had sailed from Turkey. Investigators found evidence that the importer had actually paid $2.7 million in duty for the container, in an apparent attempt to legitimise the cargo and move it through a private bonded terminal without attracting scrutiny.
It was a miscalculation that would lead to ten arrests.
The Insider Threat: When the Gatekeepers Open the Gate
The weapons could not flow at this scale without active complicity inside the system. Research by organisations including the Institute for Security Studies has established that Nigeria’s seaports and waterways have become hotspots for illicit firearms trade, networks involving not just foreign suppliers and local businessmen, but corrupt security personnel embedded within the port apparatus itself. Between 2010 and 2017 alone, an estimated 21.5 million weapons and rounds of ammunition were shipped into Nigeria through these channels.
Customs clearing agents are the first and most critical link in the chain. They prepare import documentation, liaise with shipping lines, and interact directly with port officials. A compromised agent can misclassify cargo, alter weight or content declarations, and steer containers towards sympathetic scanners — or away from X-ray machines altogether.
The rot often goes deeper. In 2013, a senior Customs official was arrested for allegedly facilitating the movement of trucks loaded with arms and ammunition for Boko Haram insurgents, one of the most explosive insider-complicity cases in Nigerian port history. A decade later, in 2023, two clearing agents — Shokunbi Olanrewaju of Shooler Global International Ltd and Joseph Nwadiodor — were detained at a Lagos port after arriving to take delivery of a container in which weapons had been concealed.
Following the 2024 Onne seizure, Customs authorities suspended the licences of all warehouses, terminals, and clearing agents involved. The principal suspect, Ali Samson Ofoma, was tracked down and arrested in Abuja alongside nine accomplices — including Okechukwu Gabriel Charles, Kingsley Mbibi, and Akinkuade Mayowa Segun. All now face prosecution.
Why It Is a Crime — And Why the Law Matters
The importation of firearms without authorisation has long been a criminal offence under Nigeria’s Firearms Act of 1959, which classifies weapons strictly and reserves military-grade arms for security agencies. To legally own a firearm, a private individual or organisation must obtain approval from the Inspector-General of Police or, in sensitive cases, the Presidency itself.
The rationale is straightforward. When weapons bypass this vetting framework, they go directly to actors the state has had no opportunity to scrutinise — criminal gangs, secessionist agitators, mercenaries, or foreign-backed armed factions. Each illegal rifle that enters the country is a potential instrument of homicide, community displacement, or mass atrocity.
Recognising that the 1959 framework was insufficient for a 21st-century security environment, President Bola Tinubu signed the Control of Small Arms and Light Weapons Act into law on June 4, 2024 — a landmark piece of legislation that provides a comprehensive legal backbone for interdiction, prosecution, and international cooperation on arms trafficking. It signals, at the highest level of government, that illegal weapons are a national security emergency, not merely a customs infraction.
The Human Cost Behind the Statistics
For the families in Zamfara displaced by bandits armed with AK-variants, for the traders in Anambra living under the shadow of unknown gunmen, for the farmers in the Middle Belt who cannot return to their land — the provenance of the weapons used against them is rarely known. What is known is the cost: lives lost, children orphaned, communities abandoned.
Many of the guns being used in those theatres of violence were once, at some point, exactly like the ones now sitting in a secured facility in Ikeja — anonymous items in an unmarked container, moving quietly through a busy port, relying on a falsified document and a complicit signature to complete their journey.
That is the story the 1,599 guns tell. Not just a customs success. A warning.
Part Two of this investigation examines how justice has been — and has not been — served in arms smuggling cases, and what Nigeria must now do to close the gaps that keep the blood cargo flowing.
— Waterwaysnews.ng | Ports & Security Investigative Desk
BOAT OPERATORS ARE THE FIRST RESPONDERS ON THE LAGOON
.…..Carter bridge rescue exposes gap
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
Lagos, Nigeria. For the second time in just over a year, informal boat operators, not any designated emergency service, were the ones who pulled a woman alive from the Lagos Lagoon after she jumped from Carter Bridge, raising fresh questions about who is actually responsible for water rescue on one of Africa’s busiest urban waterways.
The unidentified woman jumped from the Idumota end of the bridge on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4. Eyewitnesses said local boat operators working within the area reacted within moments, pulling her from the water before she could be swept further into the lagoon’s currents. Video circulating on social media shows her seated inside a wooden canoe, visibly disoriented, as bystanders on the bridge above shouted down, some pleading with the operators not to hand her over to the police, others audibly distressed and asking what could have driven her to the water’s edge.
A PATTERN AT THE SAME BRIDGE
This is not an isolated site incident. In July 2025, a separate woman was intercepted at the same Carter Bridge location, that time by police Rapid Response Squad officers on routine patrol, before she entered the water. Tuesday’s case had no such patrol presence. The outcome depended entirely on boat operators who happened to be working nearby.
Carter Bridge, opened in 1901, is one of only three crossings linking Lagos Island to the mainland, alongside Eko and Third Mainland bridges, and sits directly over lagoon waters used daily by commercial boat traffic, artisanal fishermen and ferry operators. That density of water traffic is precisely why informal operators keep ending up as the default emergency responders, they are simply the ones already on the water when someone goes in.
NO FORMAL WATER RESCUE MANDATE
Neither the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) nor the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) operates a dedicated, publicised rapid-response rescue protocol for bridge-jump incidents on Lagos waterways, despite the lagoon’s role as a primary transport corridor for hundreds of thousands of commuters. Search-and-rescue capacity for road-based emergencies sits with the police and, in some cases, the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) but water incidents routinely fall to whichever boat happens to be nearest, with no formal reporting chain back to state authorities on outcomes, casualty data or referral to mental health support afterward.
That gap matters beyond this single case. Nigeria records among the highest estimated suicide rates in West Africa according to World Health Organization modelling, yet has no national suicide prevention strategy comparable to those adopted elsewhere on the continent, and Lagos, a lagoon city where bridges double as the tallest accessible points over open water, has no publicly documented protocol connecting bridge surveillance, water rescue and post-rescue mental health referral into a single chain of response.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE RESCUE
As of the time of filing, the woman’s identity, condition and the circumstances that led to the incident remain undisclosed. It is not yet known whether she was handed to police, taken to a hospital, or released, despite the pleas heard on video against police involvement, a detail that itself reflects a wider public wariness in Lagos toward treating suicide attempts as a criminal matter rather than a medical one. The Lagos State government had not issued a statement at the time of this report.
This story concerns a suicide attempt. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a trusted person, a doctor, or a crisis line for support.
Fire Breaks Out at Bono Tank Farm in Olodi-Apapa, Cause Yet Unknown
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
Firefighters were on Friday battling a blaze at Bono Tank Farm in the Coconut area of Olodi-Apapa, Lagos, one of several petroleum storage facilities lining the busy Apapa-Oworonshoki Expressway corridor.
The Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service confirmed the incident, with its spokesperson, Shakiru Amodu, stating that crews had been deployed to the scene to contain the fire and prevent it from spreading to adjoining tank farms and energy installations in the densely industrialised zone.
As at press time, the cause of the fire remained unconfirmed, and there was no official word on casualties or the scale of damage to the facility. Authorities said updates on the investigation and the outcome of firefighting efforts would follow as operations continued.
Nigeria Watch: The blaze once again puts a spotlight on the fire safety architecture around Apapa’s tank farm cluster, an area with concentrations of petroleum storage in the country. Recurring incidents of this kind raise familiar questions for regulators, terminal operators, and depot owners alike: are inspection regimes, firefighting readiness, and emergency evacuation protocols keeping pace with the volume and proximity of fuel storage in the corridor?
With Nigeria’s downstream sector expanding rapidly on the back of Dangote Refinery output and rising import substitution, incidents like this one underline why depot safety compliance deserves the same regulatory urgency being applied to port and vessel safety elsewhere in the sector.
Security & Safety
Marine Litter Crisis Threatens Nigeria’s Blue Economy Ambitions as Waterways Choke on Plastic Waste
Marine Litter Crisis Threatens Nigeria’s Blue Economy Ambitions as Waterways Choke on Plastic Waste
From Ikoyi waterfront to the Bonny-Port Harcourt corridor, plastic debris, abandoned fishing nets and industrial refuse are clogging Nigeria’s inland and coastal waterways — damaging vessels, imperilling livelihoods and undermining the nation’s maritime growth agenda.
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Lagos Correspondent
Nigeria’s ambition to unlock the full economic potential of its blue economy is facing a stubborn and worsening adversary — marine litter. Across the country’s 853-kilometre coastline, and deep into its network of rivers, creeks, lagoons and inland waterways, plastic waste, styrofoam, discarded fishing gear and household refuse are accumulating at a rate that threatens to undermine the shipping, fisheries, tourism and inland transport sectors simultaneously.
The alarm has grown sharper in the days surrounding World Ocean Day, observed globally on June 8, which this year placed particular emphasis on the marine litter crisis and its direct threat to sustainable blue economy development — a framework central to the mandate of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy.
Nigeria Among the World’s Top Plastic Waste Generators
The scale of the problem is stark. According to World Bank data, Nigeria generates an estimated 2.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, with only a fraction entering any form of recycling process. The overwhelming majority ends up in open dumpsites, drainage channels and, ultimately, waterways — driven by inadequate waste collection infrastructure, rapid urbanisation and poor environmental compliance culture.
The global picture is no less alarming. The United Nations warns that 14 million tonnes of plastic enter the world’s oceans every year — a figure projected to nearly double to 27 million tonnes by 2040 if current trajectories are not reversed. The economic cost, according to the UN, stands at approximately $13 billion annually, with over 817 marine species threatened. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has further estimated that plastic accounts for at least 85 per cent of all marine waste.
For Nigeria’s maritime sector specifically, the Regional Coordinator for Africa at Prevention of Marine Litter in the Gulf of Guinea (PROTEGO), Clem Ugorji, has put the country’s direct financial losses from poor waste management and marine litter at $1 billion per year — a figure that demands the attention of port operators, shipping companies, waterways transport concessionaires and maritime regulators alike.
Operational Hazards for Vessels and Waterway Operators
The consequences extend well beyond environmental degradation. For Nigeria’s inland waterways transport (IWT) sector — already strained by underinvestment, ageing fleets and safety concerns — marine litter represents a direct operational and safety hazard.
The Lagos Area Manager of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Sarat Braimah, has raised the alarm in clear terms. Floating debris, she warned, is routinely sucked into vessel water intakes, wrapping around propeller shafts and clogging engine cooling systems. The result is sudden engine failure mid-journey — leaving passenger ferries, water taxis and speedboats dangerously exposed to capsizing or collision with larger commercial vessels navigating shared waterways.
Braimah noted that once plastics, cans and nylon bags enter water bodies rather than shore-based waste receptacles, the damage is immediate: marine life is choked, water quality degrades, and toxins enter the aquatic food chain that coastal communities depend on for sustenance and income.
The situation deteriorates markedly during the annual rainy season, when residents dump refuse into drainage channels already clogged with accumulated waste, and floodwaters carry massive volumes of debris directly into creeks, lagoons and offshore waters — compounding a maritime environmental emergency that recurs year after year.
Fisheries, Coastal Communities and the Hidden Human Cost
Beyond vessel operations, the impact on Nigeria’s artisanal fishing communities is severe. Fishermen across coastal and riverine states report persistently damaged gear, declining catches and increasingly contaminated fishing grounds. Scientists have raised growing concerns about microplastics — particles formed as larger plastic items break down — which now enter marine food chains and, through seafood consumption, ultimately reach the human population. UNEP has warned that plastic pollution now constitutes a direct threat to food security and public health at a global scale.
Coastal communities in Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Lagos and other littoral states, many of which depend almost exclusively on fishing and waterway-based trade, bear the sharpest end of this crisis — absorbing health risks, economic losses and environmental degradation simultaneously.
Private Sector Steps Up: NSML’s Clean Waterways Initiative
In the absence of a fully integrated national marine litter strategy, it is increasingly the private maritime sector that has moved to fill the gap. One notable actor is NLNG Shipping and Marine Services Limited (NSML), which has expanded its Clean Waterways Initiative (CWI) — a corporate social responsibility programme targeting the waterway corridor between the NLNG Jetty in Port Harcourt and the operating terminal on Bonny Island in Rivers State.
Operating through a “Triple A” framework of Awareness, Advocacy and Action, NSML engages riverine communities on the health and economic dangers of plastic pollution, partners with local governments to improve waste disposal and recycling infrastructure, and conducts quarterly large-scale clean-up exercises to physically remove debris from affected water bodies. The company has recently expanded these activities to include the Bonny Island waterfronts on a regular basis.
NSML Chief Executive Abdulkadir Ahmed described the initiative as a direct response to the growing volume of plastic waste and debris entering rivers, creeks and coastal waters — and stressed that lasting progress requires both regulatory backing and individual behavioural change.
“Advocacy is about engaging government agencies and regulatory bodies so that we can have the necessary backing to take action,” Ahmed said. “We are beginning to see some positive impact from these efforts, and we are not alone in this fight because plastic pollution is a global issue.”
Ahmed was forthright that clean-up exercises, though essential, are insufficient on their own. What is needed, he argued, is consistent individual action and a fundamental reduction in dependence on single-use plastics — combined with the enforcement frameworks and industry accountability that only government can provide.
IMO Sets 2030 Zero-Discharge Target
At the global regulatory level, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has sharpened its response. Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez, in his World Oceans Day statement, announced the adoption of the IMO’s 2026 Strategy and Action Plan aimed at eliminating plastic waste discharges from shipping, with a headline target of zero plastic discharge to sea from ships by 2030.
Dominguez acknowledged that progress is being recorded on pollution control, biodiversity protection and climate action within the global shipping industry, but stressed that considerably more coordinated international effort is required. He called specifically for stronger regulatory frameworks to curb plastic pollution, address underwater radiated noise, and manage the spread of transboundary marine species — and urged a fundamental rethinking of humanity’s relationship with the ocean.
Nigeria Watch: What This Means for the Maritime Sector
For Nigeria’s maritime and blue economy stakeholders, the convergence of World Ocean Day, the IMO’s 2030 commitment and NSML’s expanded private-sector initiative carries a pointed message: the window to get ahead of the marine litter crisis is narrowing.
Nigeria still lacks the fully integrated national marine litter strategy that the scale of its waterways challenge demands — one that combines waste management reform, robust recycling infrastructure, regulatory enforcement, public education and industry-wide accountability. The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, NIMASA, NIWA, LASWA and the Nigerian Ports Authority each have roles to play, but coordination between them on environmental governance remains limited.
The stakes for the maritime sector are concrete. Navigational hazards from floating debris inflate vessel maintenance costs, increase accident risk on passenger ferry routes, and degrade the operating environment for port authorities, shipping companies and terminal concessionaires. Every kilometre of waterway choked with litter is a direct tax on trade competitiveness and investor confidence in Nigeria’s blue economy promise.
With the IMO’s 2030 zero-discharge target now formally on the table, Nigeria’s maritime operators — and the regulators that oversee them — face a tightening timeline to demonstrate that the country’s waterways can meet international environmental governance standards. The infrastructure investment, policy coherence and enforcement will required to do so is not trivial. But the cost of inaction, measured in vessel damage, lost catches, degraded coastlines and stunted blue economy growth, will ultimately prove far higher.
Waterways News | waterwaysnews.ng
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Buba Audu
February 19, 2026 at 1:07 pm
This is very rich and detailed journalism.