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
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
Water Transport Operators Push For Recognition At The Table As FTAN Demands Tourism Policy Reforms
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Nigeria’s tourism sector needs urgent policy reform, stronger collaboration and fresh investment to compete globally and water transport operators who are members of the Federation of Tourism Associations of Nigeria (FTAN) want that conversation to include the boats, ferries and waterway routes that move millions of Nigerians and could move even more tourists.
That was the underlying idea raised by Comrade Babatope Fajemirokun National President of Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) represented by Chief Raymond Gold, National PRO of WABOTAN, at the ninth Nigeria Tourism Investors Forum and Exhibition (NTIFE), held over two days in Abuja under the theme “Tourism Transformation Through Collaboration, Policy Alignment and Investment.” The events took place between Thursday 30 to Friday 31 of July 2026. Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN), is a corporate member of FTAN
The forum drew policymakers, investors, tourism operators and development partners.
FTAN President Dr Aliyu Badaki used his welcome remarks to press the Federal Government to overhaul tourism-related laws and regulatory frameworks that he said breed duplication, institutional conflict and legal uncertainty for operators. He said the federation’s newly developed Tourism Transformation Mandate (TTM) is meant to unify every segment of the tourism value chain.
Babatope Fajemirokun, through Chief Gold emphasizes the fact that this value chain for Nigeria’s coastal cities, riverine communities and inland waterway corridors, runs directly through water transport.
Badaki argued that fragmented efforts and weak coordination have held back the sector for years, and called for regulation that enables rather than inhibits growth.
Minister of Art, Culture, Tourism and Creative Economy, Hannatu Musawa, who declared the forum open, described tourism as a strategic pillar for economic diversification. She said government cannot finance tourism transformation alone and that private capital must lead, with government’s role limited to creating an enabling environment for investors.
In his keynote address, Sen. Ibrahim Ida called for stronger collaboration among government, the private sector and host communities, saying tourism can generate jobs, foreign exchange and diversification if properly harnessed.
Panel sessions, moderated by Justina Ovat of Calabar Hospitality House Limited, featured Nigeria Tourism Development Authority (NTDA) Director-General Dr Ola Awakan, who called for policy consistency and investor-friendly incentives, and Dr Philip Maga of the National Institute for Hospitality and Tourism (NIHOTOUR), who flagged the need for stronger workforce training to close skills gaps across the hospitality industry.
Hospitality entrepreneur Lanre Balogun urged investors to prioritise disciplined, long-term planning.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria’s water transport sector, NTIFE’s reform push is not a side conversation. Rather, it is a direct stakeholder issue. FTAN’s corporate membership includes Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN) and the Association of Tourist Boat Operators and Water Transporters of Nigeria (ATBOWATON), both drawn from the ranks of operators who run the boats, ferries and water taxis that already serve Lagos’s creeks, the Niger Delta’s riverine towns and coastal leisure routes. Their presence inside FTAN means the federation’s demand for regulatory clarity and coordinated policy carries an inland-waterways and blue-economy dimension that goes beyond hotels and heritage sites.
That matters because water tourism sits at an awkward regulatory junction in Nigeria. A tourist boat operator answers not only to tourism authorities but potentially to NIWA, LASWA (in Lagos) and NIMASA on safety standards, and state government tourism boards, precisely the kind of overlapping jurisdiction Badaki described as breeding “duplication, institutional conflicts… and operational uncertainty.”
The 2026 Supreme Court ruling affirming NIWA’s regulatory authority over inland waterways nationwide, following the NIWA-LASWA jurisdictional dispute, is a live example of the kind of institutional friction FTAN’s Tourism Transformation Mandate is meant to resolve, at least on the tourism side.
Musawa’s call for private capital to lead tourism investment also lands squarely on water transport operators’ desks. Vessel acquisition, safety retrofitting, jetty infrastructure and life-jacket compliance all require capital that small-scale operators, including WABOTAN’s member-cooperative structure, have struggled to access, a gap that echoes the long-running CVFF disbursement failure in the cabotage shipping sector and underscores why financing bottlenecks are not unique to cargo and passenger shipping alone.
If FTAN’s push for policy alignment succeeds in drawing water transport formally into Nigeria’s tourism investment architecture, operators like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON could gain a stronger claim to inclusion in infrastructure programmes such as the Omi-Eko electric ferry project and LASWA’s ferry safety development initiatives, turning routine commuter water transport into a recognised leisure and tourism asset, not just a transportation afterthought.
For a sector accustomed to being regulated but rarely consulted, this call by Babatope Fajemirokun is a modest but meaningful call.
Blue Economy
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
NIMASA Deepens Seafarer Welfare Push, Signs Off Renewed Mission to Seafarers Collaboration
By Ighoyota Onaibre | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated its commitment to improving the welfare of Nigerian seafarers, pledging deeper collaboration with the Mission to Seafarers (MtS) as part of ongoing reforms in the sector.
The commitment came as the Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, received a delegation from the Mission to Seafarers at the agency’s Lagos headquarters, led by the Chairman of MtS Lagos, Chief Adebayo Sarumi, alongside the Regional Director for Africa, Reverend Cedric Rautenbach.
Speaking on behalf of the DG, NIMASA’s Executive Director for Operations, Engr. Fatai Taiye Adeyemi, said the agency would continue tightening certification processes, expanding capacity development programmes, and strengthening welfare policies for seafarers both at sea and in port, in partnership with stakeholders such as the Mission to Seafarers.
Chief Sarumi commended NIMASA’s ongoing reforms and expressed confidence that closer collaboration would translate into tangible welfare gains for Nigerian maritime professionals. Reverend Rautenbach, for his part, clarified that while the Mission to Seafarers and Nigeria’s Port Welfare Committees pursue a shared objective which is the the wellbeing of seafarers. The two bodies operate on distinct, complementary mandates, making coordination between them essential to strengthening on-ground support at Nigerian ports.
The meeting covered decent working conditions, welfare service gaps, and areas of mutual collaboration. NIMASA said the engagement aligns with its obligations under the Maritime Labour Convention (MLC) 2006, and forms part of a broader push toward stronger regulatory oversight and stakeholder engagement on seafarer rights.
Nigeria Watch
Beyond the courtesy-visit optics, this meeting lands on a fault line that has dogged Nigerian seafarer welfare for years: fragmented institutional responsibility. NIMASA regulates and certifies; Port Welfare Committees are meant to deliver frontline services at berths; the Mission to Seafarers, a faith-based international NGO, fills gaps neither statutory body always reaches. These gaps are chaplaincy, shore leave support, emergency assistance, and advocacy for stranded or abandoned crew.
Rautenbach’s point about “distinct but complementary mandates” is worth pressing on, because in practice that distinction has often meant duplication in some areas and total absence in others.
Nigerian seafarers have long reported patchy access to welfare facilities at ports like Apapa, Tin Can Island, and Onne. Such reports include inconsistent internet access, poor rest facilities, and slow response to cases of wage default or abandonment by errant shipowners, issues MWUN has repeatedly raised in past CBA compliance disputes.
NIMASA’s MLC 2006 framing is the right one, but enforcement, not policy language, remains the industry’s persistent complaint. If this renewed MtS partnership is to mean more than another photo-op at headquarters, it should translate into a documented, port-by-port welfare service map: which ports have functioning seafarer centres, which Port Welfare Committees are actually active, and where the Mission to Seafarers’ Flying Angel network is present versus where seafarers are effectively on their own.
Nigerian crews calling at their own national ports deserve better than welfare support that depends on which NGO happens to be in town.
NIMASA Bets on Youths to Power Nigeria’s Blue Giant Ambitions
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has restated that the country’s push to become Africa’s “Blue Giant” will rise or fall on how well it equips young Nigerians for the blue economy, with the agency’s Director-General, Dr Dayo Mobereola, describing youth capacity-building as the engine room of the National Marine and Blue Economy Policy.
Mobereola made the point at the 10th Taiwo Afolabi Annual Maritime (TAAM) Lecture at the University of Lagos, where he was represented by NIMASA’s Director of Reforms Coordination and Blue Economy, Mrs Nneka Obianyor. He linked the agency’s youth agenda directly to President Bola Tinubu’s economic diversification drive, noting that the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Adegboyega Oyetola, has directed NIMASA to prioritise skills development and job creation for young Nigerians in the sector.
Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Dayo Mobereola
To back that up, Mobereola pointed to a cluster of NIMASA programmes already running: the long-standing Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP), a newly launched Blue Economy Accelerator Initiative, skills acquisition centres spread across the six geopolitical zones, and the rollout of Institutes of Maritime Studies in select Nigerian universities. He framed these as deliberate interventions meant to build capacity, generate employment, and spur innovation among the country’s youth population.
Separately, NIMASA used the UNILAG engagement to go beyond ceremony, running an interactive session with doctoral and master’s students on shipping development, maritime logistics, cabotage implementation, and maritime labour regulation. The session was led by the agency’s Director of Cabotage Services, Ms Gloria Anyasodo, and was pitched as part of a broader effort to strengthen ties between academia and industry in tackling the maritime sector’s practical challenges.
Nigeria Watch
The optics are good; the test, as always, will be delivery. NIMASA has no shortage of youth-facing initiatives on paper. The NSDP has existed for years, skills centres have been announced before, and Institutes of Maritime Studies have been floated in past budget cycles. What’s new here is the Blue Economy Accelerator Initiative, and it arrives with the same vagueness that has dogged similar rollouts: no disclosed funding envelope, no timeline for the six geopolitical zone centres to be fully operational, and no public framework for how graduates of these programmes are absorbed into shipping, logistics, or cabotage jobs afterward.
That absorption question matters more than any lecture-hall soundbite. Nigeria’s maritime training pipeline, from MAN Oron to the seafarer certification backlog that this publication has tracked, already produces more qualified hands than the domestic fleet and port ecosystem can currently employ. This is a mismatch tied directly to the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund’s decades-long disbursement failure and the slow pace of indigenous vessel acquisition. Training more youths without fixing that bottleneck simply shifts the frustration downstream, from unemployment to underemployment.
There’s also an accountability gap in how these announcements are made. They are usually made through a lecture delegation rather than a costed policy document. If NIMASA and the Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy are serious about youths driving the Blue Giant ambition, the next disclosure should include enrolment numbers, the accelerator’s funding source, and most critically, the placement data showing how many NSDP and skills-centre graduates have actually found sea-time or shore-based maritime employment. Until then, this remains a well-intentioned promise stacked on top of several older, still-unfulfilled promises.
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