Security & Safety
Nigeria’s Waterway Crisis: Tragic Toll of Negligence, the Path Forward
PART 1: The Crisis Unfolding
A National Tragedy Waiting for Solutions
Every year, Nigeria’s waterways—which should serve as vital arteries of commerce and connectivity for millions of citizens—become scenes of unimaginable tragedy. What begins as routine journeys often end in desperate struggles against the water, with families losing breadwinners, children losing parents, and communities losing their future. The numbers are staggering, yet what makes them truly haunting is that most of these deaths are entirely preventable.
The Alarming Death Toll
Official records paint a grim picture of Nigeria’s waterway safety crisis. Between 2021 and 2024, the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) documented a horrifying loss of life:
| Year | Deaths Recorded |
| 2021-2022 (Average) | 330 |
| 2023 | 231+ |
| 2024 | 231 |
| Jan-Aug 2025 | 92 |
However, these official figures mask a deeper reality. Industry watchers and civil society organizations estimate that actual fatalities are substantially higher, with some reports suggesting over 600 deaths in 2024 alone. The discrepancy between official counts and field realities reflects a serious data collection and reporting problem that undermines the government’s ability to address the crisis effectively. Notably, over 3,000 boat accidents have been recorded in the past decade, with the Marine Crafts Builders Association of Nigeria (MCBAN) documenting more than 3,000 lives lost during this period.
Recent Catastrophic Incidents
The year 2024 and early 2025 witnessed several particularly devastating incidents that shocked the nation and drew urgent calls for action. In October 2024, a boat capsized in Niger State killing at least 70 people when it struck a submerged tree stump. Days later, a Kogi State accident claimed 54 lives, while numerous other incidents in August, November, and December added to the toll. Most recently, in September 2025, another tragedy in Niger State left 60 people dead. Most victims are traders, farmers, schoolchildren, and seasonal workers—ordinary Nigerians whose only choice is to risk their lives on unsafe waterways to reach markets, farms, and schools.
Why the Tragedies Keep Happening
Maritime experts and investigation reports have consistently identified a constellation of preventable factors that turn ordinary boat journeys into death traps:
- Chronic Overloading: Boat operators prioritize profit over safety, routinely loading vessels with double or triple their intended capacity. The boat that capsized in Niger with over 70 deaths was carrying approximately 200 passengers when its capacity was only 100.
- Widespread Use of Unsafe Vessels: Wooden boats dominate commercial water transport. These vessels are poorly maintained, lack basic safety equipment, and deteriorate rapidly with cracks and leakages. No comprehensive vessel registration system exists to ensure seaworthiness.
- Absence of Life-Saving Equipment: A Nigeria Safety Investigation Bureau report reveals that 90 percent of waterway fatalities result from drowning, with 90 percent of victims not wearing life jackets. Most boats operate without any rescue equipment whatsoever.
- Illegal Night Travel: Despite regulations prohibiting travel between 6 PM and 6 AM, illegal nighttime sailing persists, reducing visibility and response times during emergencies. Many accidents occur at 2-3 AM, hours when rescue operations are most difficult.
- Poor Operator Training and Licensing: Unlike land and air transport operators, water transport operators often lack formal certification or regular skills updates. Many are untrained in emergency response, weather assessment, or vessel navigation.
- Weak Enforcement and Regulatory Oversight: Despite NIWA’s regulations carrying penalties up to seven years imprisonment, enforcement remains sporadic and inconsistent. Remote waterways lack adequate supervision, and fines are often viewed as a cost of doing business rather than a deterrent.
The Wider Impact on Communities
The tragedy of Nigeria’s waterway deaths extends far beyond statistics. These are not random disasters but predictable consequences of poverty, poor infrastructure, and policy neglect.
- For riverine communities with no road access, boats are the only lifeline—the only way to reach markets, hospitals, and schools. When transport becomes deadly, entire communities are held hostage to fear and necessity.
- Traders lose their livelihoods and families lose breadwinners. In Niger State, farmers heading to markets, women going to trade centers, and school-age children using boats to cross swollen rivers comprise the majority of victims.
- The psychological burden is immense. Families planning travel weigh life and death against economic necessity. Parents fear sending children to school across waterways. Traders hesitate before embarking on market journeys.
- Economic activity suffers as people avoid water routes when possible, opting for dangerous road alternatives—increasing risk from banditry and accidents on poorly maintained highways.
- Public confidence in water transport has eroded. What should be a cheaper, more reliable alternative to congested roads has become a source of terror rather than opportunity.
Rays of Hope: Government Initiatives
In recognition of the crisis, the Federal Government under President Bola Tinubu and the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy have initiated reforms. The Inland Waterways Transportation Regulations 2023, launched in April 2024, represents a comprehensive framework for water transport safety. Under the leadership of NIWA’s Managing Director, Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji (appointed in October 2023), the agency has deployed new equipment including:
- 3 surveillance boats to improve waterway visibility
- 5 enforcement boats for safety compliance monitoring
- 1 combat-ready 115-horsepower gun patrol boat for rapid security response
- 1 modern 62-seater passenger boat as a safer alternative to wooden canoes
- 3 fully equipped water ambulances for emergency response
- 2 hydrographic survey boats with advanced seafloor mapping technology
- Distribution of hundreds of life jackets across 12 riverine states
These efforts have yielded measurable results. NIWA reports fatalities dropped from an average of 330 annually (2021-2022) to 231 in 2024, representing a 30 percent reduction. The agency also points to improved rescue operations, noting successful rescues in May and August 2025 when 99 and 104 passengers respectively were saved from capsizing vessels without loss of life. The launch of NIWA’s Water Marshal Corps with 80 officers has proven effective in controlling boat loading and enforcing safety regulations at jetties.
Bode Animashaun covers maritime policy and blue economy development for waterwaysnews.ng
BOAT OPERATORS ARE THE FIRST RESPONDERS ON THE LAGOON
.…..Carter bridge rescue exposes gap
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
Lagos, Nigeria. For the second time in just over a year, informal boat operators, not any designated emergency service, were the ones who pulled a woman alive from the Lagos Lagoon after she jumped from Carter Bridge, raising fresh questions about who is actually responsible for water rescue on one of Africa’s busiest urban waterways.
The unidentified woman jumped from the Idumota end of the bridge on the afternoon of Tuesday, August 4. Eyewitnesses said local boat operators working within the area reacted within moments, pulling her from the water before she could be swept further into the lagoon’s currents. Video circulating on social media shows her seated inside a wooden canoe, visibly disoriented, as bystanders on the bridge above shouted down, some pleading with the operators not to hand her over to the police, others audibly distressed and asking what could have driven her to the water’s edge.
A PATTERN AT THE SAME BRIDGE
This is not an isolated site incident. In July 2025, a separate woman was intercepted at the same Carter Bridge location, that time by police Rapid Response Squad officers on routine patrol, before she entered the water. Tuesday’s case had no such patrol presence. The outcome depended entirely on boat operators who happened to be working nearby.
Carter Bridge, opened in 1901, is one of only three crossings linking Lagos Island to the mainland, alongside Eko and Third Mainland bridges, and sits directly over lagoon waters used daily by commercial boat traffic, artisanal fishermen and ferry operators. That density of water traffic is precisely why informal operators keep ending up as the default emergency responders, they are simply the ones already on the water when someone goes in.
NO FORMAL WATER RESCUE MANDATE
Neither the Lagos State Waterways Authority (LASWA) nor the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) operates a dedicated, publicised rapid-response rescue protocol for bridge-jump incidents on Lagos waterways, despite the lagoon’s role as a primary transport corridor for hundreds of thousands of commuters. Search-and-rescue capacity for road-based emergencies sits with the police and, in some cases, the Lagos State Emergency Management Agency (LASEMA) but water incidents routinely fall to whichever boat happens to be nearest, with no formal reporting chain back to state authorities on outcomes, casualty data or referral to mental health support afterward.
That gap matters beyond this single case. Nigeria records among the highest estimated suicide rates in West Africa according to World Health Organization modelling, yet has no national suicide prevention strategy comparable to those adopted elsewhere on the continent, and Lagos, a lagoon city where bridges double as the tallest accessible points over open water, has no publicly documented protocol connecting bridge surveillance, water rescue and post-rescue mental health referral into a single chain of response.
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THE RESCUE
As of the time of filing, the woman’s identity, condition and the circumstances that led to the incident remain undisclosed. It is not yet known whether she was handed to police, taken to a hospital, or released, despite the pleas heard on video against police involvement, a detail that itself reflects a wider public wariness in Lagos toward treating suicide attempts as a criminal matter rather than a medical one. The Lagos State government had not issued a statement at the time of this report.
This story concerns a suicide attempt. If you or someone you know is struggling, please reach out to a trusted person, a doctor, or a crisis line for support.
Fire Breaks Out at Bono Tank Farm in Olodi-Apapa, Cause Yet Unknown
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
Firefighters were on Friday battling a blaze at Bono Tank Farm in the Coconut area of Olodi-Apapa, Lagos, one of several petroleum storage facilities lining the busy Apapa-Oworonshoki Expressway corridor.
The Lagos State Fire and Rescue Service confirmed the incident, with its spokesperson, Shakiru Amodu, stating that crews had been deployed to the scene to contain the fire and prevent it from spreading to adjoining tank farms and energy installations in the densely industrialised zone.
As at press time, the cause of the fire remained unconfirmed, and there was no official word on casualties or the scale of damage to the facility. Authorities said updates on the investigation and the outcome of firefighting efforts would follow as operations continued.
Nigeria Watch: The blaze once again puts a spotlight on the fire safety architecture around Apapa’s tank farm cluster, an area with concentrations of petroleum storage in the country. Recurring incidents of this kind raise familiar questions for regulators, terminal operators, and depot owners alike: are inspection regimes, firefighting readiness, and emergency evacuation protocols keeping pace with the volume and proximity of fuel storage in the corridor?
With Nigeria’s downstream sector expanding rapidly on the back of Dangote Refinery output and rising import substitution, incidents like this one underline why depot safety compliance deserves the same regulatory urgency being applied to port and vessel safety elsewhere in the sector.
Security & Safety
Marine Litter Crisis Threatens Nigeria’s Blue Economy Ambitions as Waterways Choke on Plastic Waste
Marine Litter Crisis Threatens Nigeria’s Blue Economy Ambitions as Waterways Choke on Plastic Waste
From Ikoyi waterfront to the Bonny-Port Harcourt corridor, plastic debris, abandoned fishing nets and industrial refuse are clogging Nigeria’s inland and coastal waterways — damaging vessels, imperilling livelihoods and undermining the nation’s maritime growth agenda.
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Lagos Correspondent
Nigeria’s ambition to unlock the full economic potential of its blue economy is facing a stubborn and worsening adversary — marine litter. Across the country’s 853-kilometre coastline, and deep into its network of rivers, creeks, lagoons and inland waterways, plastic waste, styrofoam, discarded fishing gear and household refuse are accumulating at a rate that threatens to undermine the shipping, fisheries, tourism and inland transport sectors simultaneously.
The alarm has grown sharper in the days surrounding World Ocean Day, observed globally on June 8, which this year placed particular emphasis on the marine litter crisis and its direct threat to sustainable blue economy development — a framework central to the mandate of Nigeria’s Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy.
Nigeria Among the World’s Top Plastic Waste Generators
The scale of the problem is stark. According to World Bank data, Nigeria generates an estimated 2.5 million tonnes of plastic waste annually, with only a fraction entering any form of recycling process. The overwhelming majority ends up in open dumpsites, drainage channels and, ultimately, waterways — driven by inadequate waste collection infrastructure, rapid urbanisation and poor environmental compliance culture.
The global picture is no less alarming. The United Nations warns that 14 million tonnes of plastic enter the world’s oceans every year — a figure projected to nearly double to 27 million tonnes by 2040 if current trajectories are not reversed. The economic cost, according to the UN, stands at approximately $13 billion annually, with over 817 marine species threatened. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has further estimated that plastic accounts for at least 85 per cent of all marine waste.
For Nigeria’s maritime sector specifically, the Regional Coordinator for Africa at Prevention of Marine Litter in the Gulf of Guinea (PROTEGO), Clem Ugorji, has put the country’s direct financial losses from poor waste management and marine litter at $1 billion per year — a figure that demands the attention of port operators, shipping companies, waterways transport concessionaires and maritime regulators alike.
Operational Hazards for Vessels and Waterway Operators
The consequences extend well beyond environmental degradation. For Nigeria’s inland waterways transport (IWT) sector — already strained by underinvestment, ageing fleets and safety concerns — marine litter represents a direct operational and safety hazard.
The Lagos Area Manager of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Sarat Braimah, has raised the alarm in clear terms. Floating debris, she warned, is routinely sucked into vessel water intakes, wrapping around propeller shafts and clogging engine cooling systems. The result is sudden engine failure mid-journey — leaving passenger ferries, water taxis and speedboats dangerously exposed to capsizing or collision with larger commercial vessels navigating shared waterways.
Braimah noted that once plastics, cans and nylon bags enter water bodies rather than shore-based waste receptacles, the damage is immediate: marine life is choked, water quality degrades, and toxins enter the aquatic food chain that coastal communities depend on for sustenance and income.
The situation deteriorates markedly during the annual rainy season, when residents dump refuse into drainage channels already clogged with accumulated waste, and floodwaters carry massive volumes of debris directly into creeks, lagoons and offshore waters — compounding a maritime environmental emergency that recurs year after year.
Fisheries, Coastal Communities and the Hidden Human Cost
Beyond vessel operations, the impact on Nigeria’s artisanal fishing communities is severe. Fishermen across coastal and riverine states report persistently damaged gear, declining catches and increasingly contaminated fishing grounds. Scientists have raised growing concerns about microplastics — particles formed as larger plastic items break down — which now enter marine food chains and, through seafood consumption, ultimately reach the human population. UNEP has warned that plastic pollution now constitutes a direct threat to food security and public health at a global scale.
Coastal communities in Rivers, Bayelsa, Delta, Lagos and other littoral states, many of which depend almost exclusively on fishing and waterway-based trade, bear the sharpest end of this crisis — absorbing health risks, economic losses and environmental degradation simultaneously.
Private Sector Steps Up: NSML’s Clean Waterways Initiative
In the absence of a fully integrated national marine litter strategy, it is increasingly the private maritime sector that has moved to fill the gap. One notable actor is NLNG Shipping and Marine Services Limited (NSML), which has expanded its Clean Waterways Initiative (CWI) — a corporate social responsibility programme targeting the waterway corridor between the NLNG Jetty in Port Harcourt and the operating terminal on Bonny Island in Rivers State.
Operating through a “Triple A” framework of Awareness, Advocacy and Action, NSML engages riverine communities on the health and economic dangers of plastic pollution, partners with local governments to improve waste disposal and recycling infrastructure, and conducts quarterly large-scale clean-up exercises to physically remove debris from affected water bodies. The company has recently expanded these activities to include the Bonny Island waterfronts on a regular basis.
NSML Chief Executive Abdulkadir Ahmed described the initiative as a direct response to the growing volume of plastic waste and debris entering rivers, creeks and coastal waters — and stressed that lasting progress requires both regulatory backing and individual behavioural change.
“Advocacy is about engaging government agencies and regulatory bodies so that we can have the necessary backing to take action,” Ahmed said. “We are beginning to see some positive impact from these efforts, and we are not alone in this fight because plastic pollution is a global issue.”
Ahmed was forthright that clean-up exercises, though essential, are insufficient on their own. What is needed, he argued, is consistent individual action and a fundamental reduction in dependence on single-use plastics — combined with the enforcement frameworks and industry accountability that only government can provide.
IMO Sets 2030 Zero-Discharge Target
At the global regulatory level, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has sharpened its response. Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez, in his World Oceans Day statement, announced the adoption of the IMO’s 2026 Strategy and Action Plan aimed at eliminating plastic waste discharges from shipping, with a headline target of zero plastic discharge to sea from ships by 2030.
Dominguez acknowledged that progress is being recorded on pollution control, biodiversity protection and climate action within the global shipping industry, but stressed that considerably more coordinated international effort is required. He called specifically for stronger regulatory frameworks to curb plastic pollution, address underwater radiated noise, and manage the spread of transboundary marine species — and urged a fundamental rethinking of humanity’s relationship with the ocean.
Nigeria Watch: What This Means for the Maritime Sector
For Nigeria’s maritime and blue economy stakeholders, the convergence of World Ocean Day, the IMO’s 2030 commitment and NSML’s expanded private-sector initiative carries a pointed message: the window to get ahead of the marine litter crisis is narrowing.
Nigeria still lacks the fully integrated national marine litter strategy that the scale of its waterways challenge demands — one that combines waste management reform, robust recycling infrastructure, regulatory enforcement, public education and industry-wide accountability. The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, NIMASA, NIWA, LASWA and the Nigerian Ports Authority each have roles to play, but coordination between them on environmental governance remains limited.
The stakes for the maritime sector are concrete. Navigational hazards from floating debris inflate vessel maintenance costs, increase accident risk on passenger ferry routes, and degrade the operating environment for port authorities, shipping companies and terminal concessionaires. Every kilometre of waterway choked with litter is a direct tax on trade competitiveness and investor confidence in Nigeria’s blue economy promise.
With the IMO’s 2030 zero-discharge target now formally on the table, Nigeria’s maritime operators — and the regulators that oversee them — face a tightening timeline to demonstrate that the country’s waterways can meet international environmental governance standards. The infrastructure investment, policy coherence and enforcement will required to do so is not trivial. But the cost of inaction, measured in vessel damage, lost catches, degraded coastlines and stunted blue economy growth, will ultimately prove far higher.
Waterways News | waterwaysnews.ng
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Raymond Gold
February 16, 2026 at 2:48 am
Thank you for your very kind comments and commendations. We pray they listen.
Raymond Gold
February 17, 2026 at 12:38 am
Thank you for your very kind comments and commendations. We will continue to do our best in all that we so