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.