Blue Economy
Bulldozed and Abandoned: How Waterfront Demolitions Are Decimating Nigeria’s Blue Economy at the Grassroots
Bulldozed and Abandoned: How Waterfront Demolitions Are Decimating Nigeria’s Blue Economy at the Grassroots
The overnight demolition of Oworonshoki — one of Lagos’ oldest waterfront communities — has left hundreds of fishermen, boat operators, and waterside traders homeless, their livelihoods wiped out, and their children out of school. As Lagos plans a N7 billion jetty on the same waterfront, critics are asking: can Nigeria build a Blue Economy on the ruins of the communities that sustain it? Raymond Gold reports
As dusk descended on the waterfront community of Oworonshoki in Kosofe Local Government Area of Lagos State one September night in 2025, fishermen were tallying the day’s catch. Boat operators were tying their vessels to familiar moorings. Women fish traders were arranging the last of their smoked stock. Children, worn out from school and play, were drifting to sleep in homes their parents and grandparents had built, one block at a time, over decades.
Then came the sound.
A low, distant rumble. The growl of heavy machinery. Then the lights of bulldozers, cutting through the dark — and behind them, a convoy of heavily armed security operatives moving through the narrow waterside streets.
Within hours, homes were gone. Schools were rubble. Fishing sheds and waterside trade stalls had been flattened. Families fled with whatever they could carry — mattresses balanced on heads, babies clutched to chests, some escaping with nothing at all.
Months later, the ruins remain. But beyond the concrete and twisted roofing sheets lies a deeper devastation — one that strikes at the heart of Nigeria’s Blue Economy aspiration. Because Oworonshoki is not merely a residential settlement. It is a working waterfront community, home to generations of fishermen, artisanal fish traders, boat operators, and waterway transport workers — the very foot soldiers of the aquatic economy that federal and state governments say they want to grow.
A Waterfront Torn Apart
Oworonshoki’s identity has always been defined by the water. Situated along Lagos Lagoon, it has for generations been a community of people who live by and from the waterways — local fishermen casting nets before dawn, boat operators ferrying passengers and goods across the lagoon, fish traders supplying markets across the Lagos mainland.
These are not marginal economic actors. They are contributors to a fisheries and inland waterways sector that Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, the Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), and the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) have all identified as critical to the Blue Economy agenda.
Yet when bulldozers arrived at Oworonshoki in the dead of night, none of those institutions appeared to have raised an alarm on behalf of the community’s waterside population.
Daniel Ayomikun, a youth leader, recalled the night the demolitions began.
“It started late last year, at Ojileri axis, towards the Third Mainland Bridge, at about 11:30 p.m., 12:30 a.m. They came in with their bulldozers. They started evicting people, gave them five minutes to pack out their belongings.”
The operation did not end that night. According to Ayomikun, the pattern continued for about a week — demolitions conducted only at night, under cover of darkness, when residents had no time to resist or document.
He alleged that the demolition teams were accompanied by thugs who looted valuables and household appliances from homes as bulldozers worked.
“The task force also — they came with thugs and hooligans. They would start selling people’s valuables, home appliances and the likes. It was really annoying.”
By the time the machinery fell silent, hundreds of structures had been erased. Fishing equipment, boats under repair, trading stock — all were caught in the destruction alongside family homes.
Living on Rubble
A recent visit to Oworonshoki reveals a community still in crisis. Entire stretches of land that once accommodated vibrant residential and waterside commercial compounds now resemble the aftermath of an airstrike. Concrete foundations are exposed. Broken walls stand like monuments to what was lost. Twisted roofing sheets litter empty plots.
Yet life persists, stubbornly and painfully.
Tarpaulins have been tied to surviving pillars. Salvaged zinc sheets have been fashioned into makeshift roofs. Wooden planks serve as sleeping platforms. These fragile structures are now home to hundreds of families who cannot afford to leave and have nowhere to go.
“We sleep where our house used to be. I now sleep outside with my children. Even when it rains, we have nowhere to go,” said Omowunmi, a mother of two whose petty business at the waterfront was destroyed alongside her home.
Rotimi Sunday, who inherited his family’s property from his father and was born and raised in the community, sat surrounded by rubble as children played barefoot around him.
“My father lived here. I was born here. My children were raised here. Now we have nowhere else to go,” he said.
For Joke Olowu, a widow and mother of five, the demolition destroyed two houses — seven rooms and a mini flat at 14 Adamson Street, and a second property at 10 Folorunsho. What remains is the tiled floor of one of those demolished buildings, where she and her children now sleep.
“My children have been turned into scavengers,” she said. “They have gone to search for plastic waste we can sell for small cash.”
Her greatest fear is not for herself. It is for her children’s education and shelter.
Korede Bello, who has lived in the community for forty years, said everything he had built collapsed overnight.
“My families now hang around and I haven’t been able to pay my children’s school fees after the incident,” he said.
The Makoko Parallel: A Pattern of Waterfront Erasure
Oworonshoki’s tragedy is not new to Lagos. It fits a troubling pattern of waterfront community demolitions that has unfolded across the city, with Makoko — the iconic lagoon settlement on Lagos Lagoon — serving as the most internationally publicised chapter.
In July 2012, the Lagos State Government demolished a large section of Makoko with less than 72 hours’ notice, displacing an estimated 3,000 households at a stroke. The residents of Makoko — like those of Oworonshoki — were overwhelmingly artisanal fishermen, canoe builders, and waterway traders who had occupied and worked the lagoon fringe for generations.
The demolition, justified by authorities as a slum clearance exercise, drew fierce condemnation from human rights organisations, the United Nations, and urban planning experts.
Makoko’s fishermen did not disappear. Many simply relocated to other parts of the lagoon, their disrupted livelihoods never adequately compensated, their community’s social fabric permanently damaged. The site they vacated was never developed into the public infrastructure promised. Years later, much of it remained empty land, serving neither the original residents nor any articulated public purpose.
The Oworonshoki story echoes Makoko with alarming fidelity — a night demolition, minimal notice, inadequate compensation, allegations of private development interest driving the exercise, and a waterfront community of fishermen and boat operators scattered and dispossessed.
Commissioner for Waterfront Infrastructure Development Dayo Bush-Alebiosu has announced plans to construct a N7 billion jetty at the Oworonshoki waterfront, envisioning a modern facility that he said would positively impact real estate values in Ogudu, Magodo, and the Bariga axis. He added that the government is considering establishing the area’s first fish market.
The vision is modern and ambitious. But critics ask why that fish market could not have been built with the fishing community that already existed there — rather than after their displacement.
Court Orders, Compensation Claims, and Community Anger
Residents say the demolitions proceeded despite an interim restraining order issued by a Lagos State High Court. Justice Adegboyega Balogun had granted the order restraining further demolitions in parts of the affected community while disputes concerning compensation and land ownership were being addressed.
Many residents believed the court order would protect them. It did not.
Human rights lawyer Femi Falana publicly condemned the exercise, which he said proceeded in contempt of the court order.
Ayomikun said the human cost has been catastrophic.
“This thing has really affected a lot of families. Many have died. There were about 26 people sent to prison for about a month for a peaceful protest.”
He also alleged that an eight-month-old infant died during one of the operations after tear gas was deployed.
On compensation, documents that circulated online indicate that some affected residents received cheques of between N1 million and N2 million from the Lagos State Government in October 2025. Residents regard those sums as deeply insulting relative to the value of the properties destroyed.
“Why would I have a property estimated at over N68 million, N120 million, and I’ll be compensated N2 million? Does that make any sense?” Ayomikun demanded.
He also alleged that many genuine victims were excluded from the compensation process entirely, with payments channelled through the palace of Oba Babatunde Saliu, the Oloworo of Oworonshoki, whom community members have repeatedly accused of playing a central role in facilitating the demolitions — allegations that could not be independently verified. Repeated attempts to contact the monarch were unsuccessful.
Early in 2026, fears intensified further when residents observed that portions of demolished land near the Third Mainland Bridge were being fenced — raising the spectre of permanent displacement and private development on cleared waterfront land.
“Despite the court order, we can still see workers on the site,” Ayomikun said. “They said Oloworo gave them the contract to fence the land.”
Voices on Urban Justice
Temilade Sesan of the African Cities Research Consortium framed the issue squarely in terms of state obligation.
“The government has the primary obligation to ensure and assure the right to housing, to safe and affordable housing for all citizens,” she said. On compensation, she was unequivocal: established professional standards and valuation formulas exist and must be applied. “You cannot pay peanuts and then invest and reap millions of dollars from the land.”
Monika Umunna of the Heinrich Böll Foundation argued that urban development must be reoriented around people rather than profit. “We have to reflect on what kind of city we want. Is it a city for the people or a city for the profit?” she asked.
Professor Timothy Nubi of the Centre for Housing and Sustainable Development at the University of Lagos warned that societies that ignore housing inequality risk social instability, and called for inclusive mixed-income housing models that integrate displaced communities into new developments rather than erasing them.
NIGERIA WATCH
Blue Economy Cannot Be Built on Demolished Waterfronts
A Waterways News Commentary
There is a profound contradiction at the heart of Nigeria’s Blue Economy agenda that the Oworonshoki demolitions have placed in sharp relief — and it demands an honest reckoning.
The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, NIMASA, NIWA, LASWA and the full apparatus of Nigeria’s maritime governance architecture have spoken extensively about growing the Blue Economy — expanding fisheries, developing inland waterways, boosting maritime trade, creating jobs on the water. The blue economy, we are told, is the future. The waterways are an untapped national resource. Nigeria’s vast coastline, lagoons, rivers and creeks are an economic frontier to be developed.
But what exactly is the Blue Economy without the communities that have historically sustained it?
Oworonshoki’s fishermen did not read about the Blue Economy in a policy document. They have been living it — casting nets before dawn, operating boat services across Lagos Lagoon, smoking and trading fish, sustaining a waterside economy that feeds families and supplies markets. So did Makoko’s fishing families before they were scattered. So do dozens of other waterfront communities across the Niger Delta, the Benue River corridor, and the Lagos Lagoon system who remain one government demolition order away from the same fate.
The parallel between Oworonshoki and Makoko is not coincidental. It reflects a persistent pattern in how Nigerian governments — federal and state — relate to waterfront communities. These communities are simultaneously romanticised in Blue Economy rhetoric and erased in urban development practice. They are described as valuable contributors to the aquatic economy in policy papers and treated as squatters in redevelopment plans.
NIWA and LASWA have regulatory mandates over inland waterways and Lagos waterways respectively. NIMASA is charged with developing Nigeria’s maritime sector, including seafarer welfare and the workforce that feeds it. The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy sits at the apex of a policy architecture designed to realise the potential of Nigeria’s blue spaces. None of these agencies appears to have mounted a vigorous, documented intervention on behalf of Oworonshoki’s boat operators, fishermen, and waterside traders before or during the demolition exercise. That silence is a policy failure as much as the demolition itself.
The N7 billion jetty planned for Oworonshoki’s waterfront is, in principle, a legitimate piece of infrastructure. Modern jetties, fish landing facilities, and waterfront economic zones are exactly the kind of investment the Blue Economy needs. But infrastructure built on the displacement of the fishing and boating community it was ostensibly meant to serve — without integration, resettlement, or livelihood replacement — is not Blue Economy development. It is waterfront gentrification dressed in maritime policy language.
Nigeria cannot simultaneously aspire to a thriving Blue Economy and tolerate the systematic destruction of the grassroots fishing, boating, and waterside trading communities that anchor it. The fisherman who has worked Lagos Lagoon for thirty years, the boat operator who ferries passengers across the waterfront every day, the fish trader who links artisanal catch to mainland markets — these are not obstacles to the Blue Economy. They are its foundation.
Any serious Blue Economy framework must include explicit protections for waterfront communities: mandatory impact assessments before demolitions affecting fishing and boat-operating populations; fair, professionally valued compensation when displacement is unavoidable; resettlement that keeps fishing communities close to water; and active integration of artisanal fishers and boat operators into new waterfront infrastructure projects rather than their exclusion from them.
The Makoko demolition of 2012 produced no lasting public benefit. The families displaced are still displaced. The site was not transformed into anything promised. If Oworonshoki follows the same trajectory — community scattered, land fenced, fishermen gone, a gleaming jetty rising without the people who once gave the waterfront its economic life — Nigeria’s Blue Economy will have consumed one of its own building blocks.
NIMASA, NIWA, the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, and LASWA should formally designate waterfront fishing and boat-operating communities as Blue Economy stakeholders requiring special protection in any urban renewal or land-use exercise. The time to prevent the next Makoko — or Oworonshoki — is before the bulldozers arrive, not after the rubble settles.
The Blue Economy cannot be built on demolished waterfronts. And a city that erases its fishing communities while building fish markets in their place has not built anything at all.
Raymond Gold is Co-publisher and Researcher/Reporter at Waterways News
Waterways News | www.waterwaysnews.ng
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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