Blue Economy
CVFF at 23: Nigeria’s Ship Owners Still Counting Ceremonies, Not Vessels
CVFF at 23: Nigeria’s Ship Owners Still Counting Ceremonies, Not Vessels
Two decades of contributions, a flurry of directives, forums and portal launches — but no single kobo has left the vault. As Presidential approval is again cited, stakeholders are asking: will this time be different?
By Emetena Ikuku | Waterways News Maritime Desk
For twenty-three years, Nigerian ship owners have paid into the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund. For twenty-three years, they have been told disbursement is imminent. Today, the fund remains undisbursed — and the maritime industry has grown weary of applauding the machinery of process rather than the delivery of capital.
The latest chapter in this drawn-out saga unfolded in April 2025, when Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, directed the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to commence immediate disbursement of the long-embattled CVFF. NIMASA responded by issuing a Marine Notice inviting eligible indigenous shipping companies to submit applications, with qualified operators able to access up to $25 million each. The notice carried a tone of urgency. After years of false dawns — including a 2024 directive from the same minister citing Presidential designation of the CVFF as a key performance indicator for his ministry — industry stakeholders allowed themselves to feel optimistic.
A month later, in May 2025, NIMASA convened a one-day interactive forum at which the minister spoke of transparency mechanisms, a dedicated Cabotage Secretariat Unit, and partnerships with twelve Primary Lending Institutions. The expectation was almost palpable: the jinx, it seemed, had finally been broken.
It had not.
Another Ceremony, Another Threshold
On 22 January 2026, what the industry received was not a disbursement — it was another launch. At the Eko Hotel & Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos, an elaborate ceremony marked the unveiling of an online application portal. Senators, House of Representatives members, shipping company executives, maritime lawyers, agency heads and ministry officials were in attendance. Speeches were made. Officials rehearsed the familiar catalogue of benefits that CVFF disbursement would deliver — indigenous capacity growth, vessel acquisition, job creation, GDP contribution. Lawmakers congratulated NIMASA and the minister. Even maritime lawyers joined the chorus of commendation.
What was absent was any announcement of a beneficiary, a signed loan agreement, or a drawdown date.
The portal, while not without utility as an administrative tool, arrived at a moment when observers had every reason to believe disbursement had already commenced. Industry watchers who had followed proceedings through 2025 were not expecting to celebrate the beginning of an application process — they were expecting to hear of vessels being financed.
The Cost of Ceremony
Beyond the optics of process over outcome, a harder question hangs over the January launch: how much did it cost to unveil a digital portal? Flights and accommodation for invited senators and dignitaries, venue hire and production at one of Lagos’s premier hotel venues, LED screens, stage and lighting, catering, security, media coverage, consultancy and logistics — each line item may appear routine in isolation. Together, analysts note, they could rival the capital outlay for maritime training infrastructure or auxiliary vessel equipment.
A portal of the nature launched could plausibly have been built and publicised for well under N2 million. The ceremony around it almost certainly cost a multiple of that figure. In a sector crying out for capital, the allocation of scarce resources to spectacle over substance invites legitimate scrutiny.
The Structural Problem a Portal Cannot Solve
NIMASA’s Director-General has been explicit that submission of an application through the portal does not guarantee disbursement. This is an important admission, because it locates the real obstacle precisely where it has always been: not in the absence of a digital gateway, but in the structural conditions that have historically prevented approved applicants from actually receiving funds.
Bank lending appetite, eligibility criteria that shift with political priorities, approval timelines, and the sheer inertia of bureaucratic process — these are the walls that an application portal does not demolish. If Nigerian ship owners navigate a sleek digital interface only to encounter the same institutional blockages downstream, technology will have succeeded only in modernising disappointment.
What indigenous operators need is not another threshold to cross. They need certainty: that banks will lend, that criteria will remain stable, that approvals will be timely, and that funds will physically transfer.
Presidential Approval — Again
At the time of writing, it has been announced that Presidential approval for CVFF disbursement has been secured, and that NIMASA is preparing to disburse to sixty applicants who have registered interest through the portal. The announcement has been received by stakeholders with the circumspect caution of people who have been here before — not dismissal, but a measured wait-and-see that reflects the fund’s long history of near-misses.
The question the industry is asking is not whether the announcement is well-intentioned. It is whether, this time, the outcome will match the declaration.
Nigeria Watch
The CVFF was established under the Coastal and Inland Shipping (Cabotage) Act of 2003 to provide concessionary financing for Nigerian shipping companies to acquire vessels and compete in domestic waters. Over two decades, the fund has accumulated levy contributions from foreign shipping operators engaged in Nigerian cabotage trades — a pool now estimated at hundreds of millions of dollars.
Repeated failure to disburse has meant that the fund’s intended purpose — growing an indigenous fleet capable of displacing foreign operators in Nigerian coastal and inland trade — remains largely unrealised. Nigeria’s flag carrier ambitions, currently being pursued through the AD Ports Group and DP World partnership frameworks, sit alongside a CVFF that has yet to finance a single verified vessel acquisition at scale.
For NIMASA DG Dayo Mobereola, whose agency has staked significant institutional credibility on this disbursement cycle, the coming weeks will be definitive. For Minister Oyetola, the CVFF remains a litmus test for whether the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy can translate maritime policy ambition into measurable fleet development outcomes.
Twenty-three years after contributions began, the industry is not asking for another milestone in the process. It is asking for vessels in the water.
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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