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IMO Sets First-Ever Two-Year Theme for World Maritime Day, Tasks Member States to Move “From Policy to Practice”
IMO Sets First-Ever Two-Year Theme for World Maritime Day, Tasks Member States to Move “From Policy to Practice”
By Emetena Ikuku | Waterways News
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted “From Policy to Practice: Powering Maritime Excellence” as its World Maritime Day theme for both 2026 and 2027, marking the first time in the observance’s history that a single theme will run for a full two-year cycle instead of the usual one.
The decision was endorsed by the IMO Council at its 134th session in London, held from July 7 to 11, on a proposal from IMO Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez. World Maritime Day will continue to fall on the last Thursday of September each year, with 2026 and 2027 both marked under the same theme.
IMO explained that the extended timeframe reflects a deliberate shift in focus, from the adoption of new rules to ensuring those already on the books are actually applied. According to the organisation, “From Policy to Practice” speaks to its core mandate: making sure that conventions, codes and guidelines agreed at the international level are translated into national law, enforced consistently, and embedded in the daily operations of ports, ships and administrations worldwide, rather than existing only on paper.
The “Powering” element of the theme points to the practical support IMO intends to deploy to help member states close that implementation gap, including technical assistance, training programmes, capacity-building and knowledge-sharing partnerships aimed at strengthening maritime administrations and port state control regimes. “Maritime Excellence,” the organisation says, describes the end goal: a shipping industry that is safe, secure, efficient and environmentally sound, held to the highest international standards and committed to continuous improvement.
In a video message announcing the campaign, Dominguez said the true test of the global regulatory framework lies in implementation, stressing that when the industry talks about “practice,” it is ultimately talking about people, and that IMO is committed to powering that transition through direct technical cooperation and support.
IMO has invited member states, industry stakeholders and the public to join the campaign using the hashtags #WorldMaritimeDay and #MaritimePolicytoPractice as national and regional activities roll out over the two-year period.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria, a theme built entirely around closing the gap between policy and practice lands close to home. It is, in many ways, the exact fault line this desk has tracked for years across the country’s maritime sector: regulations that exist in full on paper but struggle to survive contact with implementation on the water.
The theme’s emphasis on national legislation, enforcement and day-to-day operations speaks directly to open questions around NIMASA’s cabotage regime and the long-delayed disbursement of the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), to the jurisdictional tug-of-war between NIWA and LASWA over inland waterways regulation even after Supreme Court intervention, and to the practical rollout of the NPERA Act now that the agency has formally begun operations. Each of these is, at bottom, a policy-to-practice story still waiting for its second half to be written.
It also speaks pointedly to the everyday reality of Nigeria’s informal and small-scale waterway operators, represented by bodies like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON, who often experience federal and state maritime policy not as technical assistance and capacity-building, but as enforcement action with little of the promised support attached. If IMO’s two-year campaign is genuinely about “translating international rules into action at sea and on shore,” as the organisation puts it, Nigerian regulators have an unusually clean, IMO-endorsed framework to be measured against between now and 2027, and operators on the inland waterways will be watching to see whether “powering” the transition includes powering their own long-stalled asset financing and safety upgrades, not just headline compliance targets aimed at the deep-sea fleet only.
With Nigeria holding a seat on the IMO Council, the country also carries a diplomatic stake in how visibly it is seen to be putting the theme into practice at home over the coming biennium.
Blue Economy
Oyetola Sets Up Technical Committee to Fast-Track Fish Production, Cut Nigeria’s Import Bill
Oyetola Sets Up Technical Committee to Fast-Track Fish Production, Cut Nigeria’s Import Bill
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy has begun moving from policy talk to implementation on fish production, with the Minister, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, inaugurating a Technical Committee on Accelerating Fish Production in Nigeria in Abuja on Thursday.
Oyetola said the committee’s job was to convert existing recommendations into coordinated action that can deliver measurable gains in the country’s fisheries and aquaculture sector, rather than produce another policy document.
He noted that fish remains a major source of animal protein for millions of Nigerians, and that the fisheries and aquaculture value chain sustains livelihoods across production, processing, marketing and transportation. But domestic output still falls well short of national demand, he said, with knock-on effects for food security, household incomes and the country’s foreign exchange position.
The Minister listed the sector’s key constraints as high production costs, particularly feed, poor access to quality fish seed and broodstock, weak fish-health and biosecurity systems, post-harvest losses, and inadequate cold-chain and storage infrastructure. He also pointed to limited access to affordable finance, thin research and data systems, and gaps in standards, traceability and market development.
Oyetola said the recent transfer of fisheries and aquaculture functions to his ministry gave the sector a stronger institutional platform, and reaffirmed government’s commitment to growing sustainable domestic production and cutting Nigeria’s reliance on fish imports.
The committee’s work builds on a strategic roundtable the ministry convened with the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies (NIPSS) on October 29, 2025, which produced a set of recommendations on production and value-chain bottlenecks. Members have been asked to test each recommendation against existing national policy, laws and institutional mandates, deciding whether it should be adopted, refined, folded into current programmes, studied further, or dropped and to map ongoing public, private and development-sector initiatives so scarce resources are not duplicated.
Oyetola said the committee’s final output must include a clear implementation roadmap and matrix covering priority interventions, responsible institutions, timelines, indicative costs, funding options, performance indicators and required approvals, along with credible entry points for private investment, public-private partnerships and development finance.
The Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Mrs Fatima Sugra Mahmood, who chairs the committee, pledged a thorough review process aimed at practical, measurable interventions. Prof Akintola Shehu Latunji of Lagos State University, speaking for other members, thanked the Minister and committed the committee to working with stakeholders to boost fish production nationwide.
Other members include Mr Omoragbon Wellington and Mr Garba Usman of the Federal Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture; Prof Ayo Omotayo of NIPSS; Prof Sule Abiodun of the Nigerian Institute for Oceanography and Marine Research; Prof Sadiku Suleiman Omeiza of the Federal University of Technology, Minna; Bayelsa State’s Commissioner for Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Faith Izibenua Zibs-Godwin; Dr Charles Okaga, Technical Assistant to the Minister; Dr Ebinimi Ansa of the Fisheries Society of Nigeria; Mr Onoja Sunday of the Catfish Farmers Association of Nigeria; Mr Mashi Gabriel Sani of the Fisheries Cooperative Federation of Nigeria; Mr Remi Ahmed of the Tilapia Development Association of Nigeria; and Dr Charles Iyangbe of WorldFish Nigeria.
The committee has eight weeks to submit its report.
Nigeria Watch
Fish production is not a subject Waterways News covers often, but it sits squarely inside the blue economy mandate this Ministry now carries and it is worth watching for the same reason CVFF, NPERA and NIMASA reforms are worth watching: Nigeria has no shortage of roundtables, committees and roadmaps; what it has historically lacked is follow-through.
Oyetola’s own framing, “your assignment is not to develop another policy”, reads as an implicit acknowledgment of that pattern, and an eight-week deadline is a useful marker for readers to hold the ministry to. The emphasis on cold-chain and storage infrastructure, and on post-harvest losses, also echoes concerns Waterways News has tracked on the inland waterways side, where WABOTAN and ATBOWATON operators regularly cite poor storage and logistics as a drag on returns from fish and other perishable cargo moved by water. A serious fisheries roadmap that funds cold-chain and market infrastructure along riverine routes would have direct relevance for the informal waterway transport economy this desk covers closely.
Whether this committee’s report becomes another shelved document or an actual funding and implementation pipeline is the story to follow when the eight weeks are up.
Blue Economy
NPERA Charges Staff on New Mandate as Akutah Eyes $1 Trillion Economy, Pledges Harmony with Sister Agencies
NPERA Charges Staff on New Mandate as Akutah Eyes $1 Trillion Economy, Pledges Harmony with Sister Agencies
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
The newly transitioned Nigeria Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) has told its workforce that the agency’s expanded powers must translate into measurable gains for the maritime sector, as its chief executive moved to calm anxieties over possible turf conflicts with other port institutions.
Speaking at a townhall session with staff, NPERA’s Director-General, Dr Pius Akutah, said the agency’s new statutory footing, created under the Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency Act, 2026, leaves no room for institutional rivalry, since the law spells out NPERA’s role as the ports’ economic regulator distinctly from the operational and infrastructure mandates held by other agencies.
Akutah described the President’s assent to the Act as a breakthrough for the maritime industry, saying the reinforced regulatory powers position the agency to curb sharp practices and drive efficiency at the ports. He urged staff to raise their professional standards to match the agency’s new responsibilities, and said NPERA intends to work closely with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) in particular, alongside other sister agencies, to deepen reforms and improve service delivery across the ports.
He linked the agency’s broadened mandate directly to government’s wider ambition of building a $1 trillion economy, arguing that a more predictable and business-friendly port environment is central to that goal.
The remarks follow the formal transition of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) into NPERA, a process more than a decade in the making. NPERA Governing Board chairman, Dr Ibrahim Shema, has described the change as a structural separation of economic regulation from the NPA’s landlord and infrastructure functions, with NPERA’s approach to be anchored on transparency, fairness, predictability, efficiency and accountability. Both officials have stressed that NPA retains its infrastructure role while NPERA takes on tariff regulation, licensing, competition oversight and commercial dispute resolution.
NIGERIA WATCH
Every new regulator in Nigeria’s port and maritime space arrives with the same reassurance: this one won’t fight the agencies already there. NPERA’s rollout is no exception, and the emphasis on “harmony” with NPA is itself a tell — it signals that stakeholders, including operators and shippers who have lived through NIMASA-NPA and NIWA-LASWA turf disputes, are watching closely for the first sign of overlap.
For the informal and small-scale end of the water transport economy that Waterways News tracks — the operators represented by WABOTAN and ATBOWATON — NPERA’s mandate is, on paper, encouraging. A regulator empowered to resolve commercial disputes and rein in unapproved charges could, if it functions as designed, extend some protection to smaller port users who have historically had the least leverage against terminal operators and shipping lines. But the sector’s experience with the CVFF disbursement saga is a caution against measuring reform by its founding rhetoric alone. An agency can be transparent on paper about “five principles” and still take years to deliver anything an ordinary operator can point to.
The real test for NPERA, as with NPERA’s own DG has implicitly acknowledged by tasking his staff before the agency has even settled into its new powers, will be whether tariff clarity and faster dispute resolution reach beyond the big shipping lines and terminal operators to the smaller players who move goods and people along Nigeria’s waterways every day. Waterways News will be watching how NPERA’s mandate is implemented in practice, not just how it is announced.
Editor's Choice
Gorau Tragedy: Tinubu Orders Enforcement — But Who Moved the Life Jackets Promised to Sokoto’s Riverine Communities?
Gorau Tragedy: Tinubu Orders Enforcement — But Who Moved the Life Jackets Promised to Sokoto’s Riverine Communities?
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
President Bola Tinubu has directed the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to work with the Sokoto State Government to tighten enforcement of waterways safety standards, following a boat mishap that killed dozens of farm workers in Gorau community, Goronyo Local Government Area of Sokoto State. But for a community that says it was promised, but never received the very equipment that could have prevented the disaster, an enforcement order issued after the bodies were counted raises an uncomfortable question: enforcement of what, exactly, if the safety equipment itself never left the warehouse?
What happened on the Goronyo River
The accident occurred midweek when an overloaded wooden boat ferrying farm workers and labourers to a rice harvest capsized on the Goronyo River. NIWA put the number on board at approximately 82 people, including a community leader. Casualty figures diverged sharply between agencies: the Sokoto State Police Command recorded 46 dead and 24 missing out of 77 people on board, while NIWA’s own confirmed toll stood at 41 fatalities. That gap between two official counts of the same incident is itself a small scandal, a sign of how thinly Nigeria’s inland waterways safety architecture is able to track, verify, and account for the people who use it daily.
Speaking through his Special Adviser on Information and Strategy, Bayo Onanuga, President Tinubu described the incident as a tragedy, extended condolences to the bereaved families and the Sokoto State government, and commended what he called the swift response of rescue teams. He directed NIWA and NEMA to work with the state government to prevent a recurrence and to ensure strict enforcement of safety standards going forward.
The equipment that never arrived
What the presidential statement does not mention is a detail that surfaced through Gorau’s own elected representative. Nasiru Adamu, who represents Goronyo Constituency in the Sokoto State House of Assembly, the press that Gorau community never received the engine-powered boats and life jackets that a state safety programme had promised to distribute. It remains unclear, as of this writing, where the two motorised boats allocated to Goronyo LGA were actually deployed. Or whether a single one of the accompanying life jackets ever reached the Gorau crossing point before Wednesday’s tragedy.
This is not Gorau’s first brush with disaster Findings by Waterways News revealed that Wednesday’s capsize came barely a month after another deadly waterways incident in the same local government area, making this accident a repeat failure rather than an isolated one, and raising a harder question than any federal directive answers: what, if anything changed in the intervening weeks between the two incidents?
NIWA’s response: phasing out wooden boats
Reacting to the accident, NIWA Governing Board Chairman Mukhtar Shehu Shagari said the authority is working toward phasing out wooden boats from Nigeria’s inland waterways entirely, as part of a broader push to improve navigation safety nationwide. He called on state governments to deepen cooperation with NIWA on enforcement, and urged boat operators and riverine communities to comply with existing safety regulations.
For its part, the Sokoto State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA) urged residents to strictly observe safety regulations and avoid overloading boats. This guidance, in Gorau’s case, is coming unaccompanied by the life jackets and motorised boats that would have made compliance genuinely possible in the first place.
Sokoto State Governor Ahmad Aliyu Sokoto and Senator Aminu Waziri Tambuwal have also joined in mourning the victims. Tambuwal specifically called for enforcement of boat capacity limits, provision of life jackets, and regular safety sensitisation to prevent further occurrences, essentially restating the same measures Adamu says were promised to Gorau but never delivered.
NIGERIA WATCH: A working model already exists but it isn’t in Sokoto
This is a familiar shape for Waterways News readers: a policy is announced with fanfare, and then quietly fails to reach the riverine community it was meant to protect, until tragedy forces a second announcement. Gorau is the latest entry in a pattern this desk has tracked across the CVFF disbursement saga, NIWA-LASWA jurisdictional disputes, and now inland waterway safety equipment. Government announcements travel faster than the boats and life jackets they promise.
What makes Gorau worth Waterways News’ attention specifically is the contrast with a model already running in Lagos’s own inland waterways corridors.
The Sustainable Waterways Awareness Advancement and Advocacy Organization (SWAAADO) has, through 2026, run a series of waterways safety and sustainability sensitization campaigns across the Onisiwo Kingdom and other waterfront communities in Lagos, engaging riverine residents directly on safe boating practices and the need to keep our waterways clean to ensure sustainability. These Lagos State’s waterway communities are the same kind of population Gorau’s farm workers belong to, several hundred kilometres and an entirely different river system away.
The contrast is instructive precisely because it is so basic. Where Gorau’s tragedy exposed a gap between a policy announcement and its actual delivery — boats and life jackets promised on paper but never seen on the water — SWAAADO’s waterways safety and sustainability campaigns represent the opposite approach: sustained, community-level engagement carried out by people embedded in the waterways they serve, rather than a one-off federal directive issued from Abuja only after lives are already lost.
If Tinubu’s enforcement order is going to mean more than a press statement following each disaster, community-driven sensitisation models like SWAAADO’s Onisiwo campaign offer a template that already works and could be replicated , provided such initiatives receive the funding, institutional backing, and coordination with NIWA and NEMA needed to scale beyond Lagos into riverine communities across Sokoto, Kebbi, Niger, and Nigeria’s other inland waterways states.
Cooperative operator bodies such as WABOTAN and ATBOWATON, which represent informal inland waterway operators and have consistently pressed for exactly this kind of ground-level safety engagement, are positioned to be part of that scale-up, if government is willing to fund partnership rather than issue directives alone. Without that investment, models like this one remain isolated local successes rather than the national safety net Nigeria’s riverine communities actually need.
The enforcement gap, restated
Tinubu’s directive to NIWA and NEMA is a necessary federal response to a mass-casualty event, and no one disputes that enforcement of existing safety standards needs strengthening. But for riverine communities like Gorau, the more urgent question is not whether enforcement will be strengthened going forward. The question rather is why a safety programme already announced for their specific crossing point failed to put a single life jacket or engine boat in their hands before the water took dozens of lives.
NIWA’s commitment to phasing out wooden boats is a start. What remains, as Waterways News has argued in tracking similar gaps across the sector, is the political will to fund delivery, not just enforcement, down to the last mile: the actual crossing point where farm workers board a boat every planting and harvest season.
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