Blue Economy
FG Clears Five Deep Seaports for Investment in Bold Push to Recapture Nigeria’s Stolen Cargo
FG Clears Five Deep Seaports for Investment in Bold Push to Recapture Nigeria’s Stolen Cargo
NPA Boss Confirms Approvals, Certifications and Compliance Processes Completed for Badagry, Olokola, Ibom, Bakassi and Bonny Projects as Nigeria Bleeds Over $3.5bn Annually to Neighbouring Ports
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News Correspondent | Lagos
The Federal Government of Nigeria has completed the approvals, certifications and regulatory compliance processes for five proposed deep seaport projects spread across the country’s coastline, in a determined effort to reclaim more than 70 per cent of Nigerian-bound cargo currently being handled by ports in neighbouring West African nations.
The Managing Director of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), Dr. Abubakar Dantsoho, confirmed the development at the close of a three-day meeting of Managing Directors of the Port Management Association of West and Central Africa (PMAWCA), Member Ports and the Port Statisticians Network held in Lagos. Dantsoho, who also serves as President of PMAWCA, disclosed that the five cleared projects are the Badagry Deep Sea Port in Lagos State, Olokola Deep Sea Port in Ondo State, Ibom Deep Sea Port in Akwa Ibom State, Bakassi Deep Sea Port in Cross River State, and Bonny Deep Sea Port in Rivers State.
Dantsoho noted that while investor negotiations remain ongoing given the enormous financial commitments such projects demand, the government has already laid the regulatory and administrative groundwork necessary for implementation. “In terms of approvals, certifications and compliance issues, we have taken care of five different deep-sea ports in Nigeria,” he stated.
The Five Projects at a Glance
The five cleared seaport projects represent a multi-billion dollar infrastructure programme spanning Nigeria’s southern coastline from west to east:
Badagry Deep Sea Port — Lagos State: Estimated to cost $2.59 billion, the Badagry project has received FEC approval and is projected to create approximately 250,000 jobs and attract significant foreign direct investment. It is expected to generate a total of $53.6 billion in revenue over a 45-year concession period. The project is structured in four phases under a Build, Own, Operate and Transfer (BOOT) Public-Private Partnership model and is designed as a full-scale greenfield commercial deep seaport conceived to augment Nigeria’s existing port capacity and open new trade facilitation channels.
Olokola Deep Sea Port — Ondo State: President Tinubu has granted approval for the immediate take-off of the Olokola Deep Seaport in Ogun Waterside Local Government Area, to be developed as the Blue Marine Economic Zone within the Olokola Free Trade Zone, approximately 100 kilometres from Lagos. Dangote Group has commenced development of the 10,000-hectare facility, with its backers positioning it as a key gateway for Nigerian exports and imports and a boost to the country’s competitiveness in regional and global trade.
Ibom Deep Sea Port — Akwa Ibom State: Designed for very large vessels, the Ibom Deep Sea Port is conceived as a transshipment port from which smaller vessels will redistribute cargo from mother vessels to river ports closer to consignees within Nigeria and in neighbouring countries. The project, valued at $4.6 billion, previously received Federal Executive Council approval of $2.016 billion in 2020.
Bakassi Deep Sea Port — Cross River State: The Bakassi Deep Seaport has received its Certificate of Compliance following Federal Executive Council approval. The Director-General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC), Mr. Jobson Ewalefoh, described it as a game-changer for Nigeria’s maritime and logistics ecosystem that would serve as a new maritime gateway for the country’s North-Central and North-East regions, while positioning Nigeria as a major logistics hub for West and Central Africa. Cross River State Governor Senator Bassey Otu described the milestone as historic, stressing that the state is strategically positioned to play a leading role in Nigeria’s maritime development.
Bonny Deep Sea Port — Rivers State: The Bonny Deep Sea Port is a greenfield development project sited at the southwest tip of Bonny Island, approximately 1.4 kilometres from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) facility, and is to be developed in two phases at an estimated total cost of $2 billion. Phase one includes two 8,000 TEU container berths, a general purpose berth and an oil service berth.
The Bleeding Wound: Nigeria’s Cargo Haemorrhage
The push to fast-track these projects comes against a backdrop of staggering economic losses driven by the chronic inefficiency of Nigeria’s existing port infrastructure. Annually, no fewer than $3.5 billion worth of Nigerian-bound cargoes are diverted to neighbouring ports, with the Nigerian Shippers’ Council estimating that 75 per cent of goods handled at neighbouring ports are actually intended for Nigeria.
Maritime expert and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, Olisa Agbakoba, citing analysis by Dutch consultancy firm Dynanmar, has warned that while 80 per cent of all containers headed to West and Central Africa are destined for Nigeria, less than 20 per cent actually arrive through Nigerian ports. The remainder flows to Cotonou in Benin Republic, Tema in Ghana, and Lomé in Togo.
The financial cost of this failure is enormous. Nigeria loses approximately N20 billion every day at its seaports due to poor infrastructure and the inefficiencies that frustrate cargo movement. PwC Nigeria estimates that port inefficiencies cost the economy N2.5 trillion annually in lost revenue, while the Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry puts business losses from delays and port-related expenses alone at approximately $10 billion every year.
A fresh warning has come from the Sea Empowerment Research Centre (SEREC), whose April 2026 policy advisory painted a troubling picture of the first quarter of the year. The report noted that cargo dwell time has exceeded 15 days on average, while vessel turnaround ranges between four and six days — far above global best practices. It also recorded a decline of between 8 and 12 per cent in non-oil exports, signalling a gradual loss of competitiveness in Nigeria’s export sector. SEREC warned that ports along the Cotonou–Lomé corridor are increasingly attracting Nigerian-bound cargo due to lower costs, faster clearance times, and more predictable regulatory environments, and that between 15 and 25 per cent of Nigeria-bound cargo could shift to these neighbouring ports within the next 12 to 24 months if reforms are not urgently implemented.
Reform Momentum and What Comes Next
Despite the gravity of the cargo diversion problem, there are signs of momentum. The NPA’s 2025 Operational Performance Report showed that total cargo throughput surged by 24.8 per cent, rising from approximately 103.6 million metric tonnes in 2024 to over 129.3 million metric tonnes — one of the most significant annual increases in Nigeria’s maritime history.
Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr. Adegboyega Oyetola, told the PMAWCA mid-year session that the Tinubu administration is also upgrading existing seaports through infrastructure modernisation, digital transformation, and channel deepening projects aimed at accommodating larger vessels, and that coordinated reforms and stronger collaboration among government agencies have contributed to improved cargo evacuation, reduced vessel waiting time, and a more predictable business environment for port users and investors.
The minister also pointed to the National Single Window initiative as a key reform expected to streamline cargo clearance through digital integration of port operations and government agencies.
Nigeria Watch
The regulatory clearance of all five deep seaport projects is an important milestone, but the shipping and logistics community must read it with clear eyes. The compliance certificates and FEC approvals represent the beginning of a process, not the end of one. As The Guardian reported in December 2025, several of these same projects have stalled for years — even decades — due to investor fatigue and a financing gap that analysts estimate at over $14 billion.
The critical variable is not regulatory paperwork but committed private capital. With each deep seaport costing a minimum of $2 billion to develop and global shipping lines demanding hinterland connectivity guarantees before committing vessel calls, Nigeria’s port expansion ambitions will stand or fall on its ability to close the investment gap. Freight forwarders, terminal operators, and shipping agents operating out of Apapa and Tin Can Island should watch closely for investor announcements, concession agreements, and ground-breaking timelines — those will be the true indicators of whether this latest push translates into operational infrastructure or joins the long list of announced-but-undelivered port projects that have defined Nigeria’s maritime story for the past two decades.
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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