Blue Economy
Supreme Court Strips NIWA of Powers Over Waterfront Lands in States
Supreme Court Strips NIWA of Powers Over Waterfront Lands in States
Apex court voids Sections 12 and 13 of NIWA Act, issues perpetual injunction against federal government in landmark Lagos-led constitutional suit
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News | Lagos, 24 May 2026
Nigeria’s apex court has redrawn the constitutional boundaries of federal authority over inland waterways in a ruling that carries sweeping implications for waterfront development, land administration, port hinterland management, and urban planning across the country’s coastal and riverine states.
In a landmark judgment delivered on Friday in Suit No. SC/CV/541/2025, the Supreme Court held that Sections 12 and 13 of the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) Act are invalid to the extent that they empower the federal government to regulate and control lands adjoining waterways for purposes unrelated to navigation, maritime activities and fishing.
The case, brought by Lagos State under the court’s original jurisdiction, drew in a broad coalition of Nigerian states seeking relief from what they characterised as decades of unconstitutional federal overreach into state territories. Joining Lagos in the suit were Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom, Ogun, Cross River, Kaduna, Enugu, Ebonyi, Ekiti, Benue, Rivers, Osun, Oyo and Anambra.
Lagos State’s legal team was led by former Governor Babatunde Raji Fashola SAN, alongside Olasupo Shasore SAN and Muiz Banire SAN, while the federal government was represented by Akin Olujinmi SAN.
The Ruling
The seven-member panel of the court, led by Justice Mohammed Lawal Garba, issued a perpetual injunction restraining the federal government from dealing with lands adjoining waterways within Lagos State and other states of the federation for non-navigational purposes. Justice Abubakar Sadiq Umar read the lead judgment.
Although the court was unanimous on most issues, the decision recorded a 5-2 split on the constitutionality of Sections 10 and 11 of the NIWA Act. Justices Agim and Idris dissented on some aspects, maintaining that Lagos State ought to have succeeded on additional reliefs relating to federal control over waterways.
At the heart of Lagos State’s argument was the contention that the National Assembly had exceeded its constitutional mandate. The state argued that Sections 10, 11, 12 and 13 of the NIWA Act conflicted with Sections 4 and 315 of the Constitution, the Land Use Act, and Items 36 and 64 of the Exclusive Legislative List. Lagos further argued that the federal government could not validly exercise powers over inland waterways not designated as international or interstate waterways, and that it lacked constitutional authority to regulate lands adjoining waterways for non-navigational purposes.
Before proceeding to the substance of the case, the Supreme Court first considered and dismissed preliminary objections filed by the federal government challenging its jurisdiction. The court also rejected the federal government’s argument that earlier litigation between NIWA and LASWA had already settled the matter, holding that the present suit was distinguishable from the earlier NIWA v. LSWA decision and therefore not barred by res judicata.
On the substantive constitutional questions, the apex court ruled that while the federal government possesses authority over navigation, maritime activities, fishing and international waterways, those powers do not extend to general control over lands adjoining waterways within states. The National Assembly, it held, had acted ultra vires in attempting to regulate adjoining lands for purposes outside navigation-related activities.
What the Court Granted — and What It Did Not
The victory for Lagos and co-plaintiff states, while significant, was partial. The Supreme Court declined to invalidate Sections 10 and 11 of the NIWA Act and reaffirmed the federal government’s constitutional authority over navigation and declared federal waterways. It refused Lagos State’s requests for declarations that the National Assembly lacked legislative competence over waterways not specifically designated as international or inter-state waterways, holding that those claims had already been substantially addressed in the earlier NIWA v. LSWA decision.
In practical terms, the ruling draws a precise constitutional line: the federal government retains control over waterway navigation and designated federal routes, but can no longer use NIWA’s powers to commandeer adjoining land within states for purposes unconnected to those navigation functions.
The Road to This Judgment
This ruling comes two years after the Supreme Court’s January 2024 judgment, which had broadly affirmed federal supremacy over Nigerian inland waterways. In that earlier decision, Justice John Inyang Okoro held that NIWA is the only agency with powers to exclusively manage, direct and control all activities on navigable waters and their right-of-way throughout the country, and warned Lagos State and its agencies to stay away from regulatory activities on Nigerian inland waterways.
That 2024 ruling had emboldened federal agencies and left LASWA’s revenue collection and ferry licensing operations in legal limbo. The latest judgment does not reverse the navigational authority confirmed in 2024, but it significantly curtails NIWA’s ability to extend its administrative reach into waterfront lands — a distinction with enormous practical consequences for Lagos’s waterfront economy.
Implications for the Waterways Sector
The judgment is expected to have far-reaching implications for waterfront development, land reclamation, urban planning, environmental regulation and revenue generation in Lagos and other coastal states. It is also expected to shape future constitutional litigation on waterways, land administration, federalism, and resource control across Nigeria.
For operators in Lagos — ferry services, boat operators, terminal developers, dredging companies, and waterfront property holders — the ruling provides meaningful clarity on a regulatory environment that has long been characterised by overlapping federal and state authority. The perpetual injunction against federal interference in non-navigational waterfront land activity removes a persistent source of regulatory risk for investment and development projects.
The broader question of whether LASWA can now reassert licensing and revenue collection powers over intra-state ferry services remains unresolved by this judgment, which stopped short of revisiting the navigational jurisdiction question settled in 2024.
Nigeria Watch: A Waterways News Analysis
Friday’s Supreme Court ruling is both a constitutional clarification and a commercial signal. For years, the NIWA-LASWA standoff paralysed investment decisions across Lagos’s waterfront corridor — from the creeks of Makoko to the emerging terminals along the Lekki shoreline. Developers, ferry operators, and infrastructure investors were caught between two regulatory authorities, each claiming jurisdiction and each capable of disrupting operations.
The court has now surgically divided that disputed territory: federal authority governs the water and what moves on it; state authority governs the land beside it, at least where the purpose is not navigation. That distinction is not merely academic. It determines who approves waterfront reclamation projects, who collects ground rents on jetty facilities, who authorises mixed-use developments along canal corridors, and ultimately who benefits from the economic value that water access creates in a megacity of more than 20 million people.
For Nigeria’s other coastal and riverine states — from Rivers to Bayelsa to Akwa Ibom — the perpetual injunction granted by the Supreme Court offers similar relief. Governors of those states will now have a far stronger constitutional basis to develop and commercialise their own waterfront lands without federal encroachment under the guise of NIWA’s enabling legislation.
The Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy and NIWA will need to recalibrate their operational mandates accordingly. The ministry’s ambitions for blue economy expansion depend on an efficient, investment-friendly waterways environment — and continued legal friction with state governments has historically been among the biggest obstacles to that goal.
This ruling, properly understood, is an opportunity as much as a constraint.
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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