Blue Economy
PENGASSAN vs. Tinubu’s Oil Revenue Order: Reform Resistance or Legitimate Concern?
The oil workers’ union wants the president to reverse a landmark order that strips NNPC of its power to collect and deduct Nigeria’s oil money. But the numbers tell a damning story about why the order was necessary in the first place.
Bode Animashaun
When President Bola Tinubu signed his executive order on February 13, 2026, mandating that Nigeria’s oil revenues flow directly into the Federation Account rather than through the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited, he did something few presidents had dared to do: he cut NNPC off at the money tap.
The reaction from the Petroleum and Natural Gas Senior Staff Association of Nigeria (PENGASSAN) was swift and fierce. Its president, Festus Osifo, called the order a “direct attack” on the Petroleum Industry Act (PIA) — the landmark 2021 law that restructured Nigeria’s oil sector and gave NNPC its current commercial mandate. He accused the presidency of being misled, warned of investor flight, and demanded the order be immediately recalled.
But before accepting PENGASSAN’s arguments at face value, it is worth asking: what, exactly, is being defended here?
What the Executive Order Actually Does
Under the PIA framework, NNPC retained 30 percent of the federation’s oil revenues as a management fee on profit oil and gas derived from production sharing, profit sharing, and risk service contracts. The company also retained another 30 percent of its profit oil and gas as the Frontier Exploration Fund, and an additional 20 percent of its profits for working capital and future investments.
In other words, NNPC was simultaneously Nigeria’s national oil company, a commercial enterprise, and the entity collecting, deducting, and remitting the nation’s oil money — a structural arrangement ripe for opacity and abuse.
The executive order introduces immediate measures to curb leakages, enhance transparency, eliminate duplicative structures, and reposition NNPC strictly as a commercial enterprise while safeguarding the federation’s interests. Going forward, all royalties, taxes, profit oil, and profit gas from production sharing contracts must be paid directly into the Federation Account. NNPC’s management fee and Frontier Exploration Fund deductions are scrapped.
The presidency’s case is straightforward and backed by hard evidence: NNPC has been sitting on Nigeria’s money.
The Revenue Record PENGASSAN Wants You to Ignore
The track record of NNPC’s stewardship over federation revenues is not a matter of opinion — it is documented in audit reports, FAAC minutes, and World Bank assessments.
The World Bank accused NNPC of failing to fully remit oil revenues to the Federation Account, thereby undermining fiscal transparency and macroeconomic stability. The bank noted that while the company was corporatised in 2021 to operate as a commercial entity, it still retains monopolistic control over crude oil sales and foreign exchange inflows, leading to persistent gaps between reported earnings and actual remittances. More damaging still, even after the removal of petrol subsidies, the World Bank observed that NNPC remitted only about 50 per cent of the revenue gains, using the rest to offset past arrears. PIDS
The scale of the problem goes back further. An audit by Periscope Consulting, engaged by the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, accused NNPC of withholding $42.37 billion in oil revenue from the Federation Account between 2011 and 2017. NNPC rejected the findings, but the persistent cycle of audits, counterclaims, and stalemates has weakened trust in the federation revenue system and eroded confidence among states that depend on oil proceeds for survival. PIDS
As recently as late 2025, the government quietly wrote off approximately $1.42 billion and N5.57 trillion in NNPC’s accumulated debts to the federation — essentially absorbing the losses and wiping the slate clean before this new order took effect. Officials argued that fiscal and structural arrangements introduced under the PIA had resulted in off-budget allocations and revenue deductions that diluted federal inflows, and that the action had become urgent due to declining oil and gas receipts despite improved production levels and relatively favourable global prices.
This is the context within which PENGASSAN’s outrage must be evaluated.
Does PENGASSAN’s Legal Argument Hold Water?
Osifo’s constitutional argument — that an executive order cannot override an Act of the National Assembly — is not without merit and deserves fair examination. The PIA is indeed a statute, and the sections he cites (8, 9, and 64) do establish NNPC’s operational and fiscal framework. Legal scholars will debate whether Tinubu’s order encroaches on those provisions.
However, the presidency’s counter-argument is equally grounded in law. The executive order is anchored on Section 44(3) of the Constitution, which vests ownership, control, and derivative rights in all minerals, mineral oils, and natural gas in Nigeria in the Government of the Federation. The directive seeks to restore the constitutional revenue entitlements of the federal, state, and local governments, which the government argues were effectively removed in 2021 by the PIA. In other words, Tinubu is not claiming that he can casually override legislation — he is asserting a constitutional supremacy argument: that the PIA, to the extent it diverted federation revenues away from the Federation Account, was itself constitutionally defective.
That is a substantive legal question that courts may eventually have to resolve. But it is not the frivolous overreach PENGASSAN portrays it to be.
PENGASSAN’s Consistency Problem
A closer look at PENGASSAN’s recent history of policy positions reveals a pattern that raises uncomfortable questions.
In September 2025 — just five months before this controversy — PENGASSAN and its sister union NUPENG jointly opposed the Federal Government’s proposed sale of Joint Venture equities in the upstream sector, warning that handing decisive control to private interests would weaken Nigeria’s sovereign ability to plan, stabilise supply, and respond to economic shocks. That is a legitimate concern about strategic asset divestiture and deserves to be taken seriously.
But in August 2025, Osifo himself warned that constant policy amendments — particularly to the PIA — were discouraging investors and that frequent changes to laws don’t aid stability. He is now using the same investor-confidence argument to oppose a reform that plugs revenue leakages. The irony is sharp: PENGASSAN previously warned against weakening NNPC through privatisation while now defending an NNPC structure that, by the World Bank’s own account, has been shortchanging the federation for years.
It is also worth noting that PENGASSAN eventually backed fuel subsidy removal under Tinubu — a reform far more disruptive to ordinary Nigerians than redirecting management fees to the Federation Account. The union’s selective militancy is conspicuous.
The Jobs Argument: Real or Rhetorical?
Osifo’s most emotive claim is that if the order is not reversed, “our members are in danger of being declared redundant because NNPC may not be able to meet its obligations.” This is a serious warning if true, but it needs scrutiny.
NNPC remitted N12.117 trillion to the federation between January and October 2025, and recorded N4.358 trillion in revenue and N502 billion in profit after tax. A company with those numbers — even after losing management fees and frontier fund deductions — is not on the verge of insolvency. The claim that stripping duplicative deductions will make NNPC unable to pay staff salaries conflates the company’s operating budget with its fee-collection function. These are not the same thing.
PENGASSAN also alleged that the executive order was introduced without broad consultation with key industry stakeholders, heightening concerns about transparency and regulatory certainty, with Osifo noting: “We were not adequately consulted. When policies of this magnitude are introduced without engagement, it creates uncertainty, and uncertainty is the enemy of investment.” That is a procedural complaint worth taking seriously — good policy process matters. But the absence of consultation does not make the policy wrong, especially when its underlying rationale is this strong.
Corruption Fighting Back, or Genuine Reform Anxiety?
The more difficult question is whether PENGASSAN’s pushback is, at its core, an institutional defence of the status quo under which NNPC has wielded enormous financial discretion — discretion that has not always translated into full remittances to the federation.
Nigeria’s oil unions have historically positioned themselves as guardians of the sector’s integrity. Sometimes that role has been genuinely patriotic. But an organisation that resists JV divestiture, opposes PIA amendments, warns against executive orders, and simultaneously insists that the entity responsible for years of documented revenue shortfalls must retain its deduction powers — that organisation owes Nigerians a cleaner accounting of whose interests it is actually serving.
The order forces a commercial transition by removing quasi-sovereign revenue privileges and pushing NNPC closer to operating as a true commercial oil company rather than a hybrid state revenue custodian. That is not an attack on the oil industry. That is what reform looks like.
PENGASSAN’s legal concerns about executive order limits deserve a hearing in court if it chooses to pursue them. But the moral case for keeping NNPC as both the collector and remitter of Nigeria’s oil wealth — given everything we now know about how that arrangement has worked in practice — is very difficult to make.
The Federation Account belongs to all Nigerians. For too long, it has been treated as NNPC’s first stop, not its last.
Blue Economy
FROM OCEAN TO ENGINE: How Seawater-to-Hydrogen Technology Could Reshape the Future of Maritime Fuel
FROM OCEAN TO ENGINE: How Seawater-to-Hydrogen Technology Could Reshape the Future of Maritime Fuel
Breakthrough electrolysis systems promise to turn the world’s most abundant resource into clean shipping energy — and the implications for global shipping are profound
By Raymond Gold | Co-publisher and Research Reporter| Waterways News, Lagos
For centuries, the sea has been both highway and hazard for the world’s merchant fleets — a vast, untameable resource that ships cross but cannot consume. That relationship may now be on the verge of a fundamental transformation. Engineers and clean-energy researchers are advancing technology that converts seawater directly into hydrogen fuel, potentially allowing vessels to generate their own power from the very ocean beneath their hulls.
The concept, long theorised in academic and engineering circles, has in recent years moved closer to practical application. And for an industry under mounting pressure to decarbonise — shipping accounts for nearly three percent of global greenhouse gas emissions annually — the implications could hardly be more consequential.
What the Technology Does
At its core, seawater-to-hydrogen conversion exploits a deceptively simple chemistry: water, whether fresh or saline, is composed of hydrogen and oxygen atoms that can be separated through electrolysis — the application of electrical current to drive a chemical reaction. In conventional electrolysis, this process uses purified water. The innovation driving current research is the ability to perform this separation efficiently using raw seawater, bypassing the costly and energy-intensive step of desalination.
The challenge is considerable. Seawater is not merely water with dissolved salt; it is a complex mineral solution containing chlorides, sulphates, magnesium, calcium, and dozens of trace elements that aggressively corrode standard electrolysis equipment and compromise catalytic efficiency. Overcoming this requires specialised membrane materials, corrosion-resistant electrode coatings, and advanced catalyst designs capable of selectively extracting hydrogen without triggering the destructive chlorine evolution reactions that plague conventional systems.
Several research institutions — including teams at Stanford University and in China’s leading materials science faculties — have demonstrated functional seawater electrolysis cells in laboratory conditions. The next frontier is ruggedising these systems for the rolling, salt-spray environment of an operational vessel on an ocean crossing.
Once extracted, the hydrogen can be deployed aboard ship in two primary ways: through hydrogen fuel cells, which generate electricity through an electrochemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen with water as the only byproduct; or through combustion in modified engine systems, including hydrogen-driven steam turbines — a technology that echoes the steam age of maritime history but points firmly toward a zero-emission future.
Why This Matters for Shipping
The global shipping industry moves approximately 90 percent of world trade by volume. It runs almost entirely on heavy fuel oil and marine diesel — fossil fuels that produce sulphur oxides, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter, and carbon dioxide at scale. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) has set a target of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions from international shipping by or around 2050, with intermediate milestones that are already forcing operators and flag states to act.
Alternative fuels — LNG, methanol, ammonia, and green hydrogen — are being explored across the industry. Each carries its own infrastructure challenge. LNG requires cryogenic bunkering terminals. Ammonia is toxic and demands careful handling protocols. Green hydrogen, produced from renewable electricity, depends on an entirely new supply chain that does not yet exist at the scale shipping requires.
Onboard seawater electrolysis sidesteps this infrastructure dependency entirely. A vessel equipped with the technology would, in principle, generate its own fuel continuously during a voyage, powered by renewable energy sources — solar arrays, wind-assisted propulsion, or wave energy convertors — installed on the ship itself. The bunkering port visit, one of the central logistics events in any ocean voyage, could eventually become optional rather than obligatory.
“The vision is genuine maritime energy autonomy,” one marine engineer familiar with current research described it. “You leave port, and the ocean provides.”
The Engineering Obstacles
The path from laboratory demonstration to commercial deployment is rarely short, and seawater electrolysis faces specific engineering obstacles that require resolution before any shipowner will commit capital to a retrofit or newbuild specification.
Foremost among these is the corrosion problem. The electrolytic cell, the filtration system, and all downstream hydrogen handling components must withstand not only the mineral aggressiveness of seawater but also the physical stresses of a marine operating environment — vibration, temperature cycling, and the mechanical demands of continuous operation over voyages measured in weeks. Catalysts and membranes that perform well in controlled conditions may degrade rapidly under these stresses, driving up maintenance costs and reducing reliability.
Filtration is a related challenge. Seawater must be processed through multi-stage filtration to remove particulates, biological matter, and the heaviest dissolved minerals before it reaches the electrolysis cell. The design and maintenance of these filtration trains — compact enough to fit within a vessel’s existing hull footprint without displacing cargo capacity — is itself an active area of engineering research.
Energy efficiency is perhaps the most critical metric. Electrolysis is not thermodynamically free; splitting water requires energy input, and on a vessel where every kilowatt-hour must be generated or stored, the round-trip efficiency of the fuel generation cycle determines whether the system is economically viable. Current state-of-the-art electrolysers operate at between 60 and 80 percent efficiency in ideal conditions. Marine seawater systems are not yet at the upper end of that range.
Scale is the final variable. A research cell producing grams of hydrogen per day is a proof of concept. A commercial system capable of fuelling a Panamax bulker or a large container vessel across the Pacific must produce hydrogen at a rate orders of magnitude higher, consistently and safely, in a package that integrates with existing ship systems and satisfies classification society and flag state safety requirements.
Nigeria Watch: What This Means for West Africa’s Maritime Sector
For Nigerian shipping stakeholders — from the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), private shipowners, and the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy — seawater-to-hydrogen technology warrants close attention even at this early stage of development.
Nigeria’s maritime sector is undergoing a strategic pivot. The revival of a national carrier through partnerships with DP World and AD Ports Group, the deepening of Lekki Deep Sea Port operations, and the Federal
Government’s blue economy agenda all signal ambitions to position Nigeria as a maritime hub rather than merely a transit market. The vessels and fleets that will carry those ambitions — whether coastal tankers, offshore support vessels, or deep-sea cargo ships — will be subject to increasingly strict international emissions standards as they operate in foreign ports and trade lanes.
The European Union’s Emissions Trading System now applies to shipping, and vessels calling at European ports are already paying a carbon price on their voyages. The IMO’s Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) regulations are tightening year on year. Nigerian-flagged vessels, and Nigerian operators trading internationally, cannot remain insulated from these requirements indefinitely.
A technology that enables onboard fuel generation from seawater would be particularly valuable for the offshore oil and gas support sector — a significant component of Nigeria’s maritime economy — where vessels operate far from shore for extended periods and fuel logistics represent a meaningful proportion of operating costs. Patrol and surveillance vessels operated by NIMASA and the Nigerian Navy, which must sustain extended coastal and offshore operations, represent another potential application domain.
The immediate priority for Nigerian maritime regulators and industry associations is awareness and engagement: monitoring the development trajectory of seawater electrolysis systems, participating in IMO technical working groups on alternative fuels, and ensuring that when commercial systems begin to reach the market — an eventuality most analysts place in the 2030s — Nigerian operators and shipyards are positioned to adopt rather than adapt belatedly.
Looking Ahead
The conversion of seawater into hydrogen fuel will not decarbonise global shipping overnight. The technology faces real, unresolved engineering challenges, and the capital cycle of the shipping industry — where vessels are built to operate for 25 years or more — means that transformation is necessarily gradual. But the direction of travel is clear, and the pace of research is accelerating.
What was speculative a decade ago is now demonstrable in laboratory conditions. What is demonstrable today will, with sustained investment and engineering ingenuity, be deployable at sea within the decade. For an industry that has powered itself with fossil fuels since the coal age, the prospect of drawing energy from the ocean itself represents not merely a technical advance but a philosophical one: a shift from consuming the earth’s finite reserves to harvesting the planet’s most inexhaustible resource.
The sea, in other words, may one day fuel the ships that sail in it.
Raymond Gold is Co-publisher and Research Reporter for Waterways News
Waterways News covers the Nigerian and West African maritime sector. For enquiries, advertising, and editorial submissions, visit www.waterwaysnews.ng
Oron Marine Hub: Akwa Ibom’s Bold Bid to Reclaim Its Waterfront Legacy
By Okeoghene Onoriobe, Waterways News Correspondent
There is a certain quiet confidence building along the waterfront of Oron, the ancient coastal town that sits at the southeastern tip of Akwa Ibom State, where the Cross River empties into the Atlantic and where, for generations, fishermen and traders have made their living from the sea. That confidence has a name: the Oron Marine Hub — a sweeping, multi-component marine development project that, when completed, promises to fundamentally transform not just the physical landscape of Oron, but the economic fortunes of an entire coastal corridor in southern Nigeria.
Ongoing construction at the site signals that this is no pipe dream. For a town whose maritime heritage once made it one of the most strategically important waterfront communities in the Niger Delta region, the hub represents something long overdue: a structured, modern infrastructure investment that takes the sea seriously.
More Than a Jetty
It would be a mistake to describe the Oron Marine Hub simply as a jetty project. The development is taking shape as a fully integrated marine terminal and economic complex — one designed to simultaneously address the needs of passengers, cargo operators, fishermen, security agencies, tourists, and traders.
At its core are four modern jetties, purpose-built to accommodate different categories of vessels. Passenger boats, cargo craft, and security and patrol vessels will each have dedicated berths, ending the chaotic informality that has long plagued waterfront operations across the Niger Delta. Alongside these jetties, a central terminal building is under construction to manage the flow of passengers — providing proper ticketing infrastructure, waiting areas, and the kind of organized movement that modern marine transport demands.
For too long, Nigeria’s inland and coastal waterways have operated as an afterthought to road transport, underfunded and underserved. The Oron Marine Hub is a direct challenge to that status quo.
Logistics, Trade, and the Cold Chain
Perhaps the most commercially significant aspect of the project lies in its cargo and trade infrastructure. A network of warehouses and cargo handling facilities is being integrated into the hub, designed to support marine-based trade and logistics along the Akwa Ibom coastline and beyond.
But it is the inclusion of cold storage systems, dry storage units, and fish processing facilities that may prove most transformative for the local economy. Oron sits in one of Nigeria’s most productive fishing zones, yet for decades, post-harvest losses have eaten deeply into the incomes of artisanal fishermen who lack the infrastructure to properly store or process their catch. With these facilities in place, the hub will create a direct value chain — from catch to processing to market — that could significantly increase revenues across the fishing sector, reduce waste, and open new export possibilities.
For fishing communities in Oron, Ibeno, and the broader coastline, this is not a small detail. It is potentially life-changing.
A Recreational and Tourism Offer
The Oron Marine Hub is also being designed with an eye on tourism — a sector that Nigeria’s coastal states have chronically underinvested in, despite possessing some of West Africa’s most scenic and culturally rich waterscapes.
Plans include a recreational waterfront zone, complete with leisure spaces and floating facilities that will offer residents and visitors an experience currently unavailable anywhere along this stretch of the Akwa Ibom coastline. Waterfronts, when properly developed, become magnets for economic activity — drawing restaurants, hospitality businesses, boat hire services, and cultural tourism.
Oron has history on its side. Home to one of Nigeria’s oldest and most significant traditional museums — the Oron Museum — and with a cultural identity deeply tied to water, the town has the raw ingredients for a compelling tourism offer. The Marine Hub gives it the platform.
Built to Last: Shoreline Protection and Infrastructure
Development along Nigeria’s coastline carries inherent risks. Erosion, tidal surge, and the long-term effects of climate change are real concerns for any coastal infrastructure project. The developers of the Oron Marine Hub appear to have accounted for this, incorporating shoreline protection works into the design — a feature that will be critical to the facility’s long-term viability.
Supporting the terminal operations are internal road networks, dedicated parking areas, and security infrastructure — provisions that speak to the operational complexity of running a busy marine hub and the importance of ensuring safety and order within the facility.
Restoring the Corridors
Beyond its physical footprint, the Oron Marine Hub carries significant strategic weight. Analysts and transport observers have long noted that marine routes connecting communities across the Niger Delta and the Gulf of Guinea coastline remain vastly underutilised, despite offering faster and often cheaper alternatives to road travel.
The hub is strategically positioned to restore key marine transport routes — most notably the Oron–Calabar corridor, a historically important waterway link between Akwa Ibom and Cross River States. Reviving this corridor alone would reduce travel times, ease pressure on road infrastructure, and reconnect communities that share deep commercial and cultural ties.
Wider connectivity to waterway routes in Rivers State and beyond is also within the project’s long-term vision, which could eventually reposition this corner of southern Nigeria as a genuine hub in the regional maritime network.
A Gateway City in the Making
When Nigerian leaders and planners speak of harnessing the country’s 853-kilometre coastline and vast inland waterway network, they are often speaking in abstractions. The Oron Marine Hub is concrete — literally and figuratively. It is bricks, steel, jetties, cold rooms, and warehouses rising from the waterfront of a town that has waited a long time for this moment.
When completed, Oron will not merely be a coastal town tucked into the southeastern corner of Akwa Ibom. It will be a functioning marine gateway — a point of departure and arrival for passengers, goods, and vessels; a processing hub for the fishing industry; a leisure and tourism destination; and a commercial node connecting southern Nigeria’s waterways in ways they have not been connected in a generation.
The sea has always defined Oron. With the Marine Hub, Oron is finally building something worthy of it.
NIGERIA WATCH: Tracking the ministries, departments, and agencies with a stake in this story
The Oron Marine Hub sits at the intersection of several federal mandates, making it one of the most regulatory-dense infrastructure projects currently underway in southern Nigeria. Here are the key government bodies whose oversight, policy direction, and funding priorities are directly relevant to this development:
Federal Ministry of Marine & Blue Economy — As the apex ministry for Nigeria’s maritime sector following its establishment by the Tinubu administration, this ministry holds primary federal interest in a project of this nature. The Oron Marine Hub aligns directly with the Blue Economy agenda, which seeks to monetise Nigeria’s coastal and inland water resources. The ministry’s engagement — or absence — in supporting and coordinating this project will be closely watched.
National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) — NIWA holds statutory responsibility for the development, maintenance, and regulation of Nigeria’s inland waterways, including the river and creek routes that connect Oron to Calabar, Warri, and Port Harcourt. The restoration of the Oron–Calabar corridor in particular falls squarely within NIWA’s operational mandate, and the agency’s role in dredging, charting, and regulating traffic on these routes will be essential to the hub’s commercial viability.
Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) — To the extent that the Oron Marine Hub handles cargo and commercial vessel traffic, it may fall within the NPA’s licensing and regulatory jurisdiction. The NPA’s framework for recognising and regulating smaller regional terminals and marine hubs will determine how smoothly the facility integrates into Nigeria’s broader port ecosystem.
Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) — NIMASA’s mandate covers vessel registration, seafarer certification, and maritime safety enforcement. With passenger and cargo vessels set to operate from Oron’s new jetties, NIMASA’s safety standards and enforcement presence will be critical to ensuring that the hub operates to international benchmarks and that lives on the water are protected.
Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Food Security — The hub’s fish processing facilities, cold storage systems, and post-harvest infrastructure connect directly to federal agricultural policy, particularly initiatives targeting aquaculture development and the reduction of post-harvest losses in the fisheries sub-sector. Federal support through this ministry could significantly accelerate the fishing industry components of the project.
Federal Ministry of Tourism — With a dedicated recreational waterfront zone forming part of the hub’s design, the Federal Ministry of Tourism has a clear interest in ensuring that the Oron Marine Hub is incorporated into Nigeria’s national tourism development framework and promotional campaigns.
Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet) & Nigerian Hydrological Services Agency (NIHSA) — For a coastal infrastructure project that incorporates shoreline protection works, accurate weather forecasting and hydrological data are non-negotiable. Both agencies have roles to play in providing the environmental intelligence needed to protect the hub’s long-term structural integrity against tidal and climate risks.
Akwa Ibom State Government — While not a federal body, the state government is the most proximate authority driving and financing this project. Its relationship with federal agencies — particularly NIWA, NIMASA, and the Ministry of Marine & Blue Economy — will largely determine how quickly approvals, corridor licensing, and regulatory clearances are obtained.
Waterways News will continue to monitor federal agency engagement with the Oron Marine Hub project. Relevant ministries and agencies are invited to share updates, policy positions, and timelines with our editorial team.
Send tips and reports to the Waterways News editorial desk at www.waterwaysnews.ng
NIWA Eyes West Coast Cargo Jetty as Nigeria-Ghana Trade Corridor Takes Shape
Authority commits waterfront infrastructure to sub-regional push; Calabar–Cameroon route cited as proof of concept
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News Correspondent | Lagos
The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has signalled its readiness to anchor the development of a proposed West Coast cargo jetty, positioning Nigeria’s inland waterways network as the backbone of a new sub-regional trade corridor linking Lagos to Accra.
The disclosure came during a joint inspection of the Marina Jetty in Lagos on Thursday, attended by officials of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), the Nigeria Immigration Service (NIS), NIWA, and a trade delegation from Ghana comprising corporate and private sector representatives.
Leading the NIWA delegation, Acting Managing Director Mr. Yusuf Girei confirmed that the Authority is prepared to operationalise select existing jetties as a pilot phase, targeting smoother cargo movement between Nigeria and Ghana. He pointed to NIWA’s sprawling waterfront infrastructure as a ready platform for technology-driven, hassle-free cargo operations with direct market access across Lagos.
Girei, flanked by the Authority’s General Manager (Marine), Engr. Horsefall Dakio, and Lagos Area Manager, Engr. Sarat Braimah, said NIWA’s waterways network makes it a critical enabler of inland cargo movement across West Africa.
“We are committed to leveraging our infrastructure and expertise to facilitate regional trade. Our experience on the Calabar–Cameroon route demonstrates the viability of inland water transport in boosting market access within Nigeria and across West Africa,” Girei stated.
The Authority noted that its operational track record on the Calabar–Cameroon corridor provides a scalable model for extending similar services across the West Coast, with the Lagos–Accra axis as the next logical frontier.
Nigeria Watch
The Marina Jetty inspection signals something larger than bilateral trade logistics — it marks a quiet but consequential repositioning of Nigeria’s inland waterways as an instrument of regional economic integration. For years, NIWA’s vast infrastructure has sat underutilised relative to its potential, while road-dependent trade remained the default model for West African commerce.
A functioning Nigeria–Ghana cargo corridor via water would benefit Nigerian shippers, freight forwarders, and port-adjacent businesses directly, while easing pressure on congested land routes. It would also lend weight to the Federal Government’s broader blue economy ambitions under Minister Adegboyega Oyetola, which have consistently emphasised turning waterways into productive economic assets rather than administrative liabilities.
The critical test now is whether Thursday’s inspection translates into concrete infrastructure activation — with timelines, investment commitments, and regulatory clarity from both NIWA and NPA on operational modalities. Nigerian maritime stakeholders will be watching closely.
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