Blue Economy
Nigerian Navy Commissions Jetty Shelter for Bayelsa Riverine Community
Nigerian Navy Commissions Jetty Shelter for Bayelsa Riverine Community
By Ighotota Onaibre | Waterways News Correspondent
The Nigerian Navy’s Forward Operating Base (FOB) FORMOSO, stationed in Brass Local Government Area of Bayelsa State, has commissioned a jetty waiting room for the people of Liama community — one of three host communities supporting the base, alongside Egweama and Beletieama.
The commissioning, which took place on Friday, fulfilled a pledge made by the base’s Commanding Officer, Captain Sunday Haruna, when he assumed command. The project was delivered as part of activities marking the Nigerian Navy’s 70th anniversary.
Speaking at the handover ceremony, Captain Haruna explained that the facility, though modest in size, carries significant value for a riverine community where water transport is a way of life. He noted that during the rainy season, residents waiting for boats at the jetty are routinely exposed to the elements — a situation the shelter is designed to remedy.
“Today, we have been able to achieve it. We are officially handing it over to the host community,” he declared.
Haruna urged community members to appreciate the impact of the project beyond its physical size, reaffirming the Navy’s commitment to remaining a reliable partner to riverside communities within its area of operations.
He described the gesture as part of the Navy’s broader corporate social responsibility drive, stressing that communities living alongside military installations must feel the tangible benefit of that proximity.
“We know we cannot do much, but this waiting room is important for the community while waiting for a boat to convey them. We look at it as helping to build mutual trust between us and the community,” he said, adding that Liama and its neighbours have become integral to the base’s operations.
Community leader Chief Monday Otuka received the facility on behalf of residents, commending the Navy for the initiative and pledging that the structure would be well maintained.
The commissioning adds to a series of civic engagements the Navy has undertaken across its host communities in the Niger Delta as part of its 70th anniversary outreach — a deliberate effort, according to Haruna, to ensure that no community in the base’s catchment area is left behind.
NIMASA, Liberia Forge Closer Maritime Ties, Eye Sea-Time Training for African Youths
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News Correspondent
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has signalled renewed determination to deepen inter-African maritime cooperation, following a high-level consultative visit by the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Liberia in Lagos, Mr. Dapo Akinosun, SAN, to the Agency’s Lagos headquarters.
Receiving the envoy, NIMASA Director General Dr. Dayo Mobereola described the engagement as a reflection of the enduring bilateral maritime relationship between Nigeria and Liberia, and called for accelerated continent-wide collaboration to unlock Africa’s vast maritime potential.
Capacity, Youth and the Blue Economy
Dr. Mobereola placed particular emphasis on the urgent need to expand sea-time training and practical maritime exposure for African youth, arguing that structured capacity development programmes could position Nigerian and other African seafarers to compete credibly in the global maritime labour market.
“The time has come for African nations to upscale maritime collaboration. The partnership between Nigeria and Liberia will help us build capacity, strengthen regional cooperation, and create opportunities for African youths within the global maritime industry,” the NIMASA DG stated.
He added that maritime capacity must be built beyond national borders, noting that hands-on sea-time experience remains the critical bridge between classroom training and international competitiveness.
IMO Seat and Diplomatic Goodwill
Dr. Mobereola also used the occasion to acknowledge Liberia’s support for Nigeria’s successful campaign for a Category C seat at the International Maritime Organization (IMO), describing the backing as a demonstration of the productive diplomatic and technical relationship both countries have sustained over the years.
Liberia’s Position
Consul Akinosun, for his part, said the visit was designed to reinforce bilateral maritime ties and explore concrete pathways for expanded cooperation across maritime administration, port safety, and trade facilitation. He commended NIMASA’s management for recent reform efforts and pledged Liberia’s readiness for deeper engagement.
“Nigeria has demonstrated genuine commitment to maritime partnership and regional growth. Liberia looks forward to deeper collaboration with NIMASA in maritime administration, safety, capacity development, and trade promotion for the advancement of Africa’s Blue Economy,” Akinosun said.
Also present at the meeting were NIMASA Executive Director, Maritime Labour and Cabotage Service, Mr. Jibril Abba; Director of Reforms Coordination and Strategic Management/Blue Economy Unit, Mrs. Nneka Obianyor; and Mr. Kehinde Ogundimu, Head of the Media Department at the Liberian Consulate in Lagos.
Nigeria Watch: Why This Bilateral Engagement Matters Beyond the Handshake
Diplomatic courtesy visits between maritime regulators and foreign consuls are often dismissed as ceremonial. The NIMASA-Liberia engagement this week, however, carries layered significance that warrants closer reading — particularly for Nigerian shipping stakeholders tracking the Agency’s strategic direction under Dr. Mobereola.
The IMO Dimension
Nigeria’s Category C seat at the International Maritime Organization is not merely a prestige acquisition. It translates into real influence over the rule-setting architecture that governs flag state responsibilities, port state control regimes, and the international conventions under which Nigerian-flagged vessels trade and Nigerian ports are assessed. Liberia’s support for Nigeria’s IMO bid was not incidental — Liberia is one of the world’s largest open registries, operating a flag state of enormous commercial weight through its Liberian International Ship and Corporate Registry (LISCR). When a registry of that scale backs Nigeria’s multilateral ambitions, it signals mutual interest in shaping how African maritime governance is represented at the global table. Nigeria would do well to translate that goodwill into substantive co-sponsorship of positions at IMO sessions, particularly on issues affecting Gulf of Guinea security, seafarer certification equivalences, and the decarbonisation transition costs borne disproportionately by developing maritime states.
The Seafarer Supply Chain Gap
Dr. Mobereola’s emphasis on sea-time training is a pointed acknowledgement of one of the most persistent structural weaknesses in Nigeria’s maritime sector. Nigeria produces maritime academy graduates at a respectable rate across institutions such as the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) and the various state maritime schools. The bottleneck, long identified by industry insiders, lies not in classroom supply but in the availability of berths — approved vessel positions on internationally recognised ships where cadets can accumulate the documented sea service hours required for STCW certification. Liberia’s registry connections, if properly leveraged, could open pathways for Nigerian cadets to secure sea-time placements on vessels under the Liberian flag, many of which are operated by major international shipowners. This is not a novel idea, but it has never been formalised into a bilateral protocol. The Mobereola-Akinosun meeting presents an opportunity to move that conversation from aspiration to implementation.
Cabotage and Regional Trade Connectivity
Beyond the bilateral, NIMASA’s renewed push for African maritime integration fits within a broader strategic logic that Nigerian policymakers have long articulated but inconsistently executed. The Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), still largely undisbursed, was designed in part to build indigenous fleet capacity that could anchor Nigeria as a regional shipping hub. A more integrated West African maritime space — with harmonised port state control inspections, aligned seafarer certification regimes, and cooperative vessel traffic management — would increase the commercial viability of Nigerian-flagged coastal traders operating routes to Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ghana, and Côte d’Ivoire. Until that regulatory architecture exists, the economics of regional cabotage will remain fragile. Engagements like this week’s Liberia visit are, at minimum, the diplomatic groundwork on which that architecture must eventually be built.
Blue Economy
AfCFTA Trade Gap Widens: Nigeria Issues Just 37 Certificates of Origin as South Africa Hits 4,000
AfCFTA Trade Gap Widens: Nigeria Issues Just 37 Certificates of Origin as South Africa Hits 4,000
Shipping and export communities warned as Nigeria lags far behind peers in continental trade integration
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News Correspondent
Nigeria’s participation in intra-African trade under the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) is in serious jeopardy, with fresh data revealing that Africa’s largest economy has issued a mere 37 Certificates of Origin under the framework — compared to over 4,000 by South Africa alone.
The figures, confirmed by the Nigeria Customs Service and corroborated by trade monitoring sources, expose a yawning implementation gap that maritime operators, port-sector stakeholders, and exporters say cannot be explained away by Nigeria’s complex trade environment alone.
What the Numbers Say
Approximately 8,500 Certificates of Origin have been issued continent-wide under AfCFTA to date. South Africa accounts for nearly half of that figure, with Egypt, Kenya, and Ghana also recording significantly higher utilisation rates. Nigeria — the continent’s biggest economy by GDP and its most populous nation — accounts for less than half of one per cent of the total.
The Certificate of Origin is not a bureaucratic formality. It is the document that certifies the local content of exported goods and qualifies those goods for preferential tariff treatment within the AfCFTA single market, a continental trading bloc currently valued at over $3 trillion. Without it, Nigerian exporters cannot access the duty advantages the agreement was designed to deliver.
A Port and Shipping Sector Problem
For Nigeria’s maritime community, the implications are direct. Vessels departing Nigerian ports with cargo bound for other African markets — whether dry goods, processed commodities, or refined petroleum products including those increasingly evacuated from the Dangote Refinery — depend on proper documentation to benefit from AfCFTA’s tariff preferences at destination ports.
Where that documentation is absent or delayed, cargo can face higher import duties on arrival in partner states, undermining the competitiveness of Nigerian-origin exports and the commercial case for expanding coastal and short-sea shipping on the continent.
The disparity also has implications for Nigeria’s ambitions under the cabotage regime. Nigerian shipowners seeking to build business around intra-African cargo flows need a robust export pipeline — one that can only be sustained if Nigerian goods are competitive in regional markets. AfCFTA is supposed to be the engine of that competitiveness. The data suggests the engine has barely turned over.
Systemic Failures Identified
Industry stakeholders who spoke on the matter described the situation as an implementation failure rather than a structural flaw in the AfCFTA framework itself. They identified the core problems as bureaucratic bottlenecks, limited automation of certification processes, poor sensitisation of exporters, and weak inter-agency coordination among the bodies responsible for AfCFTA execution in Nigeria — principally the Federal Ministry of Industry, Trade and Investment, the Nigeria Customs Service, and the AfCFTA coordinating office.
While countries like South Africa have rolled out digital platforms that allow exporters to obtain Certificates of Origin with relative speed and transparency, Nigeria’s process reportedly remains burdened by manual procedures, institutional delays, and a lack of awareness among the exporter community about how to use the framework at all.
High production costs, port congestion at Apapa and Tin Can Island, inadequate logistics infrastructure, and overlapping regulatory mandates further compound the problem — raising the cost of export compliance to a point where many small and medium-scale producers simply do not attempt it.
Nigeria Watch: The Competitive Risk
The AfCFTA data lands at a particularly sensitive moment for Nigerian maritime trade. With the Strait of Hormuz under pressure and global shipping routes in flux, the case for deepening Nigeria’s regional trade relationships within Africa has never been stronger. Yet the Certificate of Origin figures suggest that while other African economies are moving decisively to consolidate their positions in the continental market, Nigeria’s institutional apparatus is failing to keep pace.
South Africa’s 4,000-plus certificates do not represent a trade miracle — they represent a government that took AfCFTA implementation seriously, invested in digital certification infrastructure, and ran consistent outreach to its exporter community. Nigeria has the productive capacity to match and exceed that performance. What it demonstrably lacks, at this point, is the institutional will and execution coherence to unlock it.
Stakeholders are calling on the Federal Government to immediately overhaul the certification process through full digitalisation, enhanced inter-agency coordination, and a targeted sensitisation campaign reaching exporters through ports, industry associations, and chambers of commerce. Time, they warn, is not on Nigeria’s side. The longer the gap persists, the deeper the competitive ground lost to better-organised economies in the continent’s emerging single market.
Customs Seals Tanker, Halts Unauthorised PMS Discharge at Tin Can Island Port
By Emetena Ikuku | Waterways News Correspondent
The Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) Tin Can Island Port Command has moved to contain what it describes as a flagrant breach of port regulations, after the product tanker MT NY Maria reportedly discharged Premium Motor Spirit (PMS) at the MRS Terminal — locally known as Dantata Jetty — without the required Customs clearance and while the vessel remained under an active Customs seal.
In a statement signed by the Command’s Public Relations Officer, Oscar Ivara, the NCS pushed back against what it called misleading accounts of the incident circulating in the public domain, insisting its officers acted strictly within the powers conferred by the Nigeria Customs Service Act, 2023.
How the Incident Unfolded
According to the Command, officers from the Boarding and Rummaging Unit boarded the MT NY Maria on Saturday, May 23, 2026, immediately after the vessel arrived from the Dangote Refinery. The boarding was part of a routine documentation and compliance exercise. During the inspection, officers discovered the vessel lacked a mandatory Last Port Clearance from its port of origin — a fundamental documentation gap.
The vessel’s agent was given a two-day window to produce the missing document, while the vessel was officially sealed and placed under Customs control pending compliance.
The situation took a sharper turn when intelligence reaching the Command indicated that by Wednesday, May 27, the vessel had commenced discharge operations — despite the outstanding documentation, and in direct violation of the Customs seal still in force on the ship.
Obstruction Alleged During Enforcement
Officers who mobilised to the terminal to enforce compliance reportedly encountered resistance from security personnel at the facility. Despite the obstruction, Customs operatives gained access to the premises and ordered the ship master to halt the unauthorised discharge and report to the Enforcement Unit to make statements.
The vessel was subsequently resealed in line with standard enforcement procedures.
The Command was emphatic that the ship master was not arrested, but was invited solely to provide statements as part of an ongoing investigation into the circumstances of the incident and the alleged obstruction of officers.
Legal Basis for the Action
The NCS grounded its enforcement in multiple provisions of the Nigeria Customs Service Act, 2023. It cited Sections 30 to 35 covering Customs controls, vessel inspections, examination of goods and documentation verification. Under Section 31(2)(b), international seaports are designated Customs Control Zones, while Section 31(4) mandates that imported goods be unloaded, inspected, assessed and cleared exclusively under Customs supervision.
The discharge of PMS by MT NY Maria while under seal and without clearance was characterised as a breach of Sections 46 to 58 of the Act, which govern reporting obligations, declaration of goods, unloading procedures, and the release of goods under Customs control. Sections 212, 222, 223, 225 and 226 were further cited as giving officers explicit authority to enter premises, board and inspect vessels, patrol Customs areas, and detain ships where violations are established or reasonably suspected.
The NCS added that investigations into the obstruction encountered during the enforcement operation remain active.
Nigeria Watch
The MT NY Maria incident is one of the most pointed illustrations yet of the tensions embedded in Nigeria’s post-deregulation petroleum supply chain — particularly the Dangote Refinery corridor.
As the refinery ramps up domestic fuel supply, product tankers are making increasingly frequent coastal runs between Lekki and the Lagos port terminals. The volume and frequency of these movements are placing new strain on Customs compliance infrastructure, raising the question of whether documentation procedures have been scaled to match the pace of throughput. A vessel clearing Dangote Refinery — a domestic origin — may not trigger the same customs vigilance as an import vessel, yet the regulatory obligations are identical once the product moves into a Customs Control Zone.
The alleged decision to discharge while under an active Customs seal and without clearance — if borne out by the investigation — would represent a serious regulatory breach, and one that carries troubling implications for port order. If terminal operators or vessel principals calculate that enforcement actions can be outpaced or resisted with private security, the credibility of Customs’ regulatory role at the nation’s busiest petroleum terminals comes into question.
For the maritime industry, the key issues to watch are: whether the investigation extends to the terminal operator at the MRS facility; the outcome of the obstruction allegation, which, if substantiated, could carry criminal dimensions; and whether the NCS moves to strengthen documentation protocols for domestic refinery product movements — a gap this incident has thrown into sharp relief.
Waterways News | Port & Maritime Intelligence
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