Editor's Choice
NIWA Raises Alarm Over Leaking Boats
NIWA Raises Alarm Over Leaking Boats
Authority intensifies passenger safety sensitisation in Cross River, as riverine communities remain exposed to avoidable tragedies
By Idongesit Akaniyene | Waterways News Calabar
The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has issued a direct public safety advisory, urging Nigerians who travel by water to refuse to board any vessel from which crew members are continuously bailing out water — warning that such a condition is an unmistakable sign of structural compromise and imminent danger.
The advisory was delivered by Mr Stanley Onuoha, NIWA’s Area Manager for Cross River and Ebonyi, during an interview in Calabar on Thursday.
Bailing Water Is a Red Flag, Not Routine
Onuoha told correspondents that many waterway passengers unknowingly board vessels that are actively taking on water, either out of urgency, ignorance, or misplaced trust in boat operators. He said this practice has contributed to preventable fatalities on Nigeria’s inland waterways.
“If you are entering a boat and see people using a bailer to remove water, that is the first signal that the boat is leaking,” the NIWA official stated, urging passengers to treat such a sight as sufficient grounds to disembark immediately and seek alternative transport.
He called on passengers to conduct basic visual inspections of vessels before boarding, including checking for structural damage, adequate seating, and the general condition of the boat’s hull and fittings.
Life Jackets: Size and Condition Both Matter
The NIWA area manager also addressed the persistent problem of defective and ill-fitting life jackets on inland waterway vessels — an issue that has repeatedly featured in post-incident investigations following boat accidents in Nigeria.
Onuoha stressed that damaged life jackets offer no reliable buoyancy in an emergency, and cautioned passengers to verify not only that a jacket is present, but that it is in serviceable condition and appropriately sized for the wearer. An oversized or degraded jacket, he noted, can fail at the critical moment it is needed most.
Manifests, Weather Windows, and Daylight Travel
Beyond vessel condition, Onuoha reiterated a cluster of safety protocols that NIWA continues to promote across riverine communities. He urged passengers to insist on filling passenger manifests before departure — a requirement that aids search-and-rescue accountability in the event of an accident.
On weather, the NIWA official warned that travellers must monitor conditions carefully before embarking. He noted that deteriorating weather generates strong tidal surges capable of overwhelming small wooden boats commonly deployed on Nigeria’s inland routes.
He also recommended that all waterway journeys be conducted within the window of 6.00 a.m. to 6.00 p.m., emphasising that adequate natural light is essential for navigation safety on rivers and creeks where channel markers and emergency infrastructure remain sparse.
Onuoha stated that NIWA has continued to deploy awareness campaigns in riverine communities across Cross River State, and that sustained enforcement and sensitisation efforts have yielded measurable improvements in safety compliance on waterways within its jurisdiction.
Nigeria Watch
NIWA’s advisory from Calabar lands against a backdrop of chronic structural deficiencies in Nigeria’s inland waterways transport sector that no amount of public messaging alone can fully resolve.
The warning about leaking boats is not new — it echoes similar advisories issued after successive waterway tragedies across the Niger Delta, Cross River, Anambra, and Kebbi corridors over the past decade. What remains stubbornly unchanged is the underlying supply-side reality: a large proportion of the wooden boats plying Nigeria’s inland routes are ageing, poorly maintained, and operating without valid certificates of seaworthiness. NIWA and its state-level counterparts lack the enforcement density to inspect every jetty, every departure point, and every makeshift landing across thousands of kilometres of navigable waterways.
Passenger-side sensitisation is necessary but insufficient. The NIWA official’s advice essentially asks ordinary travellers — many of whom depend on waterways as their only viable transport option — to make safety judgements that should already have been made upstream by regulatory inspection and operator licensing. Where no alternative vessel exists, a passenger’s knowledge that a boat is leaking does not automatically translate into the freedom to walk away.
The deeper reform agenda must continue to centre on: enforcing vessel certification standards with meaningful sanctions for non-compliant operators; accelerating the rollout of proper jetty infrastructure with waiting areas that reduce boarding pressure; fast-tracking the resuscitation of the Inland Waterways Safety Levy framework; and expanding the operational reach of NIWA’s marine safety officers beyond state capitals.
The rainy season is now in full swing. Currents are swelling, tides are unpredictable, and the risk profile on Nigeria’s inland routes rises sharply between June and October. NIWA’s advisory is timely. The institutional response to the conditions behind it must be equally urgent.
Blue Economy
Nigeria Eyes €59M EU Fisheries Programme to Tackle IUU Fishing, Strengthen Ocean Governance
Nigeria Eyes €59M EU Fisheries Programme to Tackle IUU Fishing, Strengthen Ocean Governance
Oyetola Meets EU Ambassador in Abuja; Seeks Technical Support for Surveillance and Enforcement
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
Nigeria has signalled its intention to fully engage the €59 million West Africa Sustainable Ocean Programme (WASOP), as the Federal Government steps up efforts to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and advance its blue economy agenda.
The Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr. Adegboyega Oyetola, disclosed this during a high-level meeting in Abuja on Thursday with the European Union Ambassador to Nigeria, Ambassador Gautier Mignot, at which both sides reaffirmed their commitment to deepening maritime cooperation across the Gulf of Guinea.
Dr. Oyetola described WASOP — a major EU-funded initiative spanning West African coastal states — as a timely framework for reinforcing Nigeria’s enforcement capacity, improving ocean governance, and driving sustainable exploitation of marine resources. He called on the EU to scale up technical assistance to Nigeria, particularly in fisheries monitoring, maritime surveillance systems, and enforcement infrastructure.
The Minister left no ambiguity about the scale of the challenge. IUU fishing, he warned, is not merely an environmental concern but a direct assault on national food security and the livelihoods of millions of coastal Nigerians. He described the scourge as a threat to national security and food sovereignty, demanding stronger international collaboration, more aggressive monitoring, and uncompromised enforcement to permanently dismantle illicit fishing operations in Nigerian waters.
Beyond fisheries, Dr. Oyetola urged the EU to broaden its support beyond traditional piracy control to encompass environmental crimes and human trafficking — calling for a more integrated approach to maritime security in the region. He also highlighted reform milestones under Nigeria’s National Policy on Marine and Blue Economy, including improvements in port operations, logistics, and maritime security, while noting the government’s drive to expand maritime infrastructure and sharpen Nigeria’s competitiveness in global trade.
Ambassador Mignot, for his part, reaffirmed Brussels’ commitment to supporting safer and more sustainable oceans in West Africa. He outlined WASOP’s mandate — which covers integrated ocean governance, sustainable fisheries management, and protection of coastal and marine ecosystems — and indicated that the programme would strengthen coordination among coastal states and promote a more inclusive regional blue economy.
The Permanent Secretary of the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, Mrs. Fatima Mahmood, and EU Head of Cooperation Massimo De Luca, were among senior officials present at the meeting.
Nigeria Watch
Thursday’s Abuja meeting is a significant diplomatic signal, arriving at a moment when Nigeria’s blue economy ambitions are increasingly colliding with the hard realities of resource depletion, weak enforcement, and institutional capacity gaps. The €59 million WASOP envelope represents one of the most substantial multilateral fisheries governance commitments in the West African sub-region in recent years, and Nigeria’s declared intention to fully leverage it is the right instinct.
Yet the country’s track record in translating international programme commitments into verifiable enforcement outcomes on the water remains a genuine concern. IUU fishing in Nigerian waters — particularly by foreign-flagged vessels exploiting surveillance blind spots — has persisted for years despite successive ministerial declarations. The critical test of this renewed EU engagement will not be measured in memoranda signed or delegations hosted, but in whether WASOP resources ultimately translate into more patrol vessels on the water, more prosecutions on the docket, and more fish in the nets of artisanal fishers along Nigeria’s 853-kilometre coastline.
Minister Oyetola’s push to widen the cooperation agenda beyond piracy — to include environmental crimes and human trafficking — reflects a more mature and realistic understanding of the interconnected nature of maritime insecurity in the Gulf of Guinea. That framing deserves support from both the EU and Nigeria’s domestic institutions. The blue economy cannot be built on depleted seas.
Editor's Choice
DEATH ON THE MEDITERRANEAN: How Libya’s Anti-Migrant Storm Is Pushing West Africans Into The Sea
DEATH ON THE MEDITERRANEAN: How Libya’s Anti-Migrant Storm Is Pushing West Africans Into The Sea
Ten confirmed dead off Malta as hostile climate in Libya drives desperate crossings — and Nigeria’s sons and daughters are among the most exposed
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News Correspondent
The Mediterranean Sea claimed ten more lives on Sunday. But the real story did not begin on the waters off Malta. It began weeks earlier, in the streets of Tripoli — where the doors are closing fast on the hundreds of thousands of migrants, many of them West Africans, who had sought Libya as a stepping stone to a better life.
Italian rescuers recovered 10 bodies after a migrant boat capsized in waters off Malta on June 7, 2026. The vessel had departed from the Libyan coast carrying approximately 60 people, overturning roughly 45 nautical miles east-southeast of Malta. A commercial fishing vessel operating nearby managed to pull approximately 48 survivors from the water, while Italian coastguard patrol boats coordinated rescue efforts following a formal assistance request from Maltese authorities. Search operations were still ongoing as of Sunday afternoon.
The numbers are blunt and brutal. Of an estimated 60 souls who boarded that vessel, ten are confirmed dead. Others remain unaccounted for. Their names, nationalities, and stories — whether they were farmers, traders, graduates, or teenagers chasing a dream — remain unknown to the world outside the immediate rescue zone.
A Fire Burning Behind Them
What makes this tragedy distinct from the hundreds that preceded it is the political inferno that is now raging at migrants’ backs inside Libya — making the deadly sea journey not merely a gamble, but increasingly the only exit.
Just three days before the Malta capsizing, on June 4, hundreds of Libyans marched to the headquarters of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Tripoli’s Sarraj neighbourhood, chanting “Libya belongs to Libyans” and demanding the agency shut its doors. Protesters held signs reading “Our love for our country is not racism” and “Libya is not the world’s garbage bin.”
Demonstrators erected tents, then brought a truck full of sand and sealed the main gate of the UNHCR building with a physical barrier, shouting, “The Libyan people have said their word.”
Libya’s Benghazi-based parliament, the House of Representatives, issued Statement No. 2/2026 on June 1, formally rejecting the settlement and resettlement of irregular migrants, declaring that Libya’s sovereignty and identity are “red lines.”
Libya’s acting foreign minister, Taher al-Baour, stated in a television interview that there were no plans to settle migrants in Libya, stressing: “Libya is not capable of handling these numbers.”
The UN mission flatly denied running any resettlement programme, stating that it works to find solutions outside Libya for people fleeing wars and persecution, including evacuation to third countries and voluntary return when circumstances allow. But the denials have done little to calm a volatile street.
For migrants already inside Libya — many of whom have endured years of abuse, detention, and forced labour to get there — this political storm signals one thing: move now, or face an even darker fate.
Nigeria and West Africa: Caught in the Crossfire
This is where the story hits closest to home for Nigerian readers.
According to the IOM’s Displacement Tracking Matrix, as of January–February 2026, an estimated 936,134 migrants were present in Libya. Of these, 28 percent — more than a quarter of a million people — originated from West Africa. Nigeria consistently appears among the top source countries for sub-Saharan African migrants in Libya, alongside Niger, Chad, Sudan, and Egypt.
Economic hardship — unemployment, low wages, and the crushing weight of daily survival costs — remains the dominant driver pushing male migrants and those from sub-Saharan Africa toward Libya and eventually toward the sea.
These are not faceless statistics. They are young men from Edo, Delta, and Kano. Women from Ogun and Anambra. Teenagers from Borno who survived Boko Haram only to drown in a sea they had never seen until the day they boarded an overcrowded rubber dinghy. They board these vessels not out of recklessness, but out of desperation — and increasingly, out of fear of what awaits them if they stay.
827 Dead — and Counting
The Malta tragedy is one entry in a long, unrelenting ledger.
According to the UN’s International Organisation for Migration, at least 827 people have already died this year attempting the deadly Central Mediterranean crossing — the route running from North Africa to Italy and Malta. The IOM recorded more than 1,330 deaths along that same route in all of 2025.
The pace of death in 2026 is already on track to exceed last year’s toll — and the year is barely half-done.
The Central Mediterranean route is the overseas crossing from North Africa to Italy and, to a lesser degree, Malta. While most migrants aim for Italian shores, they depart from a variety of North African countries, with Libya historically being the dominant departure point.
Human rights organisations have for years called for stronger search-and-rescue capabilities and more humane migration policies. Those calls have been met largely with stronger border enforcement, deterrence campaigns, and now, an emboldened anti-migrant street movement within Libya itself.
The Squeeze: When All Exits Are Dangerous
The strategic picture is grim. To the south, Saharan crossing routes are increasingly controlled by armed militias and traffickers who extort, abuse, and sometimes kill migrants along the way. To the north, the sea awaits — indifferent and unforgiving. And now, inside Libya itself, the political climate is turning against the very people who have been using it as a waiting room for Europe.
Anti-migrant sentiment has been escalating in Libya for weeks, with residents of Tripoli’s Al-Sarraj district formally demanding UNHCR’s removal and the cessation of all activities related to undocumented migrants in residential neighbourhoods, blaming the UN agency for an “unprecedented and uncontrolled increase” in migrant numbers in the area.
For a migrant caught between Libyan hostility and Mediterranean death, the calculus is horrifying. Wait and risk mob violence, detention, or deportation to the desert. Or board the boat.
Many are choosing the boat.
What Nigeria Must Ask
For Nigeria — a country that has lost an incalculable number of its young people to these crossings over the past decade — this latest tragedy must prompt a harder national conversation.
Why are young Nigerians, many of them educated, still choosing death over life at home? What economic, security, or governance failures have made the waters off Malta appear less terrifying than staying? And what is Nigeria doing — at the diplomatic level and at the policy level — to repatriate, protect, and provide alternatives to those who are trapped in Libya right now?
The ten dead off Malta this Sunday are mourned as a statistic by the world. For Nigeria, for West Africa, they deserve to be mourned as what they were: someone’s child, sibling, neighbour, or friend — who deserved a better choice than the one the sea gave them.
Grimaldi’s “Foreign Customs Position” Defence — Does It Hold Up?
Verdict: Partially Valid in International Shipping Practice, but Legally Insufficient Under Nigerian Law
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
What Grimaldi Claimed
Grimaldi Agency Nigeria’s defence rests on three interlocking arguments:
- The containers were sold in “foreign customs position” — meaning they were never domesticated into Nigeria’s customs territory.
- The sales invoice expressly preserved this classification, limiting use to international carriage.
- Any duty liability arising from domestication falls entirely on the buyer, not the seller.
Let’s examine each leg against Nigerian customs law and international maritime practice.
PART 1: Is “Foreign Customs Position” a Legitimate International Shipping Concept?
Yes — but with important caveats.
In international shipping, a Shipper Owned Container (SOC) is a cargo container that belongs to a business or freight forwarder rather than the shipping line, giving businesses more control over logistics and helping avoid additional costs tied to carrier-owned containers.
The concept Grimaldi invokes — selling containers in “foreign customs position” for continued use in international trade — is broadly consistent with the SOC framework. Since 2022, SOCs have gained significant popularity and are projected to see continued growth due to their cost-saving benefits and operational advantages.
However, “foreign customs position” is not a magic legal shield. It is a classification that describes the customs status of goods — it does not, by itself, exempt a transaction from Nigerian regulatory obligations. The critical question is whether that classification is valid and enforceable within Nigeria’s legal framework, particularly when the physical goods remain on Nigerian soil.
PART 2: What Does Nigerian Law Actually Say?
This is where Grimaldi’s position becomes legally precarious.
The NCS Act 2023 — The Central Problem
The Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023 is a comprehensive reform of Nigeria’s customs and excise legal framework, repealing the long-standing Customs and Excise Management Act and replacing it with a modern, technology-driven and enforcement-focused statute designed to facilitate legitimate international trade, secure government revenue, and align customs administration with international best practices.
Under this Act, the treatment of shipping containers as temporary imports is explicitly regulated. Empty containers fall under temporary imports, which allow goods into Nigeria for a specific purpose and limited period without full duty payment, on condition that they will be re-exported. Shipping lines bring them in to carry cargo and are expected to take them out empty. They cannot be sold in Nigeria unless converted to permanent import.
Section 36 of the NCS Act 2023 states that temporary goods must be re-exported or converted with duty paid; failure is an offence.
The conversion process is not optional. Under the Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023 and Temporary Import Guidelines, conversion requires: application to NCS, customs valuation, payment of duties, VAT and levies into government accounts, and issuance of a release order. Only then can the container be sold legally in Nigeria, and the transaction must be in Naira unless the CBN grants an exemption.
Grimaldi’s arrangement — transferring title to buyers with the expectation that buyers will handle domestication — skips Steps 1 through 4 of this mandatory process entirely. The shipping line cannot transfer the regulatory burden to a private buyer through a contractual clause when the statutory obligation rests on the importer of record — in this case, the entity that brought the containers into Nigeria under temporary import status.
PART 3: The Dollar-Denominated Sale — A Separate Violation
Beyond the customs question, there is a second serious issue Grimaldi’s statement does not adequately address: the currency of the transaction. The CBN FX Manual 2018, Paragraph 9.01, states that all domestic transactions must be in naira except with CBN exemption, and CBN Circular TED/FEM/FPC/GEN/01/010 (2016) specifies that domiciliary accounts are for foreign inflows, not domestic payments.
Grimaldi’s sale of containers priced in US dollars, with Nigerian buyers paying through domiciliary accounts, appears to directly contravene this regulation. This is a distinct and independent violation from the customs duty question — one that Grimaldi’s statement does not address at all.
PART 4: The Revenue Exposure
Industry experts have quantified what is at stake. Using the 2026 Customs tariff for HS Code 86.09 — comprising 5% import duty, 7.5% VAT, 0.5% ECOWAS ETLS levy, and 4% FOB levy — the government loses approximately $350–$400 in duties and taxes per $2,000 container if sold without conversion. For 2,500 units, the loss amounts to $875,000 to $1,000,000 from one company in one transaction.
In the broader picture, Nigeria may have lost as much as $600 million in customs revenue over the past three decades through the unregulated sale of temporary import shipping containers by foreign shipping lines.
PART 5: What Grimaldi Gets Right — And Where It Falls Short
What is defensible:
Grimaldi is correct that in international shipping practice, containers sold in “foreign customs position” for continued use in cross-border trade can legitimately be transferred without domestication — if they actually leave the country and continue in international commerce. This is a recognised practice globally. The concept of an SOC operating in international trade without re-registering under each country’s domestic regime is commercially standard.
Where the argument collapses in the Nigerian context:
The problem is not what the invoice says — it is what happens on the ground. When containers are advertised for sale to the general Nigerian public, priced for the local market, and purchased by Nigerian buyers who will use them domestically (as shops, cold rooms, storage units, building materials — the well-documented reality of container use in Nigeria), the fiction of “foreign customs position” cannot survive legal scrutiny. The more fundamental issue is that the containers were brought into the country under a temporary import regime and therefore cannot be legally sold without first being converted to permanent import status through Customs.
A contractual clause in a sales invoice shifting duty responsibility to the buyer does not extinguish the seller’s statutory obligation under Nigerian law. Contract law cannot override statutory customs obligations — particularly where the seller is the entity that introduced the goods into Nigeria’s customs territory under temporary import status.
CONCLUSION
Grimaldi’s “foreign customs position” argument carries legitimate weight in pure international maritime doctrine — as a general principle, containers transiting between nations in cross-border trade can retain foreign customs status. However, the argument fails as a complete legal defence under Nigerian law for the following reasons:
- Section 36 of the NCS Act 2023 mandates that temporary import goods either be re-exported or formally converted with duty paid before domestic sale — a process Grimaldi bypassed.
- The temporary import regime places the re-export or conversion obligation on the entity that brought the goods in — the shipping line — not on downstream buyers.
- A contractual clause cannot substitute for statutory compliance. Transferring liability to buyers through an invoice disclaimer does not satisfy NCS Act requirements.
- The dollar-denominated transaction is a separate violation of CBN FX regulations, which Grimaldi’s statement does not address.
- The “international carriage” justification is contradicted by the commercial reality: the containers were advertised for sale to the Nigerian public in a domestic market context, not to international exporters acquiring SOCs for cross-border trade.
Grimaldi’s statement is legally sophisticated but strategically incomplete. It addresses international maritime practice accurately on its own terms, while conspicuously sidestepping the specific obligations imposed by Nigerian domestic law. In investigative terms, that gap is the story.
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