Blue Economy
The Grimaldi’s Public Statement on Sales of Empty Containers: An Investigative Analysis
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.
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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