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
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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