MARITIME TRADE & SHIPPING
Trade Expert Demands Emergency Customs Audit, as $600 Million Container Duty Scandal Emerges
Trade Expert Demands Emergency Customs Audit, as $600 Million Container Duty Scandal Emerges
Trade expert calls for emergency audit as Grimaldi Agency Nigeria moves to sell 2,500 containers outside customs law — with transactions demanded in U.S. dollars
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News Investigative Desk
Nigeria has haemorrhaged over $600 million in customs duties and value-added tax over three decades as foreign shipping lines operating in the country’s ports have brazenly sold empty import containers without complying with statutory customs conversion procedures — a practice that experts say amounts to organised economic sabotage against the Nigerian state.
The explosive allegation was made Monday by Okey Ibeke, Principal Consultant at International Trade Advisory Services, while addressing the Shipping Correspondents Association of Nigeria (SCAN) in Apapa, Lagos. Ibeke called on the Nigeria Customs Service (NCS) to immediately suspend all container sales by Grimaldi Agency Nigeria and launch a full industry-wide audit of the practice spanning the last 30 years.
“Grimaldi is not an isolated case. For 30 years, Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, COSCO, ONE, Evergreen, and PIL have operated in Nigerian ports under similar conditions.” — Okey Ibeke, Principal Consultant, International Trade Advisory Services
The Grimaldi Trigger
The controversy was ignited by media reports that Grimaldi Agency Nigeria — the local arm of the Italian shipping giant — is planning to sell more than 2,500 empty containers to Nigerian members of the public at $2,000 per 40-foot unit and $1,600 per 20-foot unit. Critically, buyers have been directed to make payments in U.S. dollars through domiciliary accounts, a requirement that directly contravenes the Central Bank of Nigeria’s policy discouraging the dollarisation of domestic transactions.
But for Ibeke, the currency issue is secondary to a far graver legal violation. Those containers, he argues, entered Nigeria under ‘Temporary Import’ status — a customs classification that legally obligates them to be re-exported after use. Selling them locally without converting their status to permanent import is, in his words, unambiguously illegal.
Breaking Down the Legal Breach
Under the Nigeria Customs Service Act 2023 and its Temporary Import Guidelines, any shipping line seeking to dispose of containers locally must first file a formal application with the NCS, submit the containers for customs valuation, pay all applicable duties, VAT, and levies into government accounts, and await a release order converting the containers to ‘home use’ status. Only after this process is complete can the containers be legally sold — and only in naira, unless the CBN grants a specific foreign exchange exemption.
According to Ibeke, Grimaldi’s current arrangement skips every single one of these prerequisite steps. “With Grimaldi, Step 5 is happening without Steps 1 to 4. That is illegal,” he stated plainly.
KEY FIGURES AT A GLANCE$600M+ Total Revenue Loss Over 30 years $350–$400 Loss Per Container Duties & taxes (2026 tariff) $875K–$1M Grimaldi Deal Loss 2,500 containers 5% + 7.5% HS Code Levy Duty + VAT + ETLS + FOB
The Numbers Behind the Scandal
Ibeke’s financial calculations are damning. Applying the 2026 Customs tariff schedule for HS Code 86.09 — which covers shipping containers — he calculated a combined levy burden of approximately 17% to 18% on each unit. At the declared sale price of $2,000, the government loses between $350 and $400 per container in unpaid duties and taxes. For Grimaldi’s 2,500 units alone, the resulting revenue shortfall ranges from $875,000 to $1,000,000 — from a single company in a single transaction.
The expert then applied this framework retrospectively. Industry data, he said, indicates that hundreds of thousands of containers have been absorbed into Nigeria’s informal and formal economies over the past three decades — repurposed as roadside shops, cold storage facilities, construction materials, and residential units. Conservatively estimating 250,000 such containers at an average price of $1,500 each, and applying a 10% duty-and-tax rate, the cumulative loss to the Federal Government exceeds $375 million — or over ₦600 billion at current exchange rates. Including broader tax leakages, the figure climbs above $600 million.
“That is money that should be funding roads, schools, hospitals, and debt service. Instead, it is lining the pockets of foreign corporations who treat Nigerian law as optional.”— Okey Ibeke, Principal Consultant, International Trade Advisory Services
Structural Drivers: Why Shipping Lines Abandon Containers
Ibeke did not merely assign blame; he also laid out the structural economic logic that has enabled the practice to persist undetected — or at least unpunished — for three decades. The root cause, he argues, is Nigeria’s severe trade imbalance: imports account for approximately 75% of dry cargo traffic through Nigerian ports, while exports represent a mere 15%. The remaining 10% consists of transit and transshipment cargoes.
Meanwhile, oil and mineral exports — which form the bulk of Nigeria’s outbound trade at 70% of export value — are not containerised. The consequence is stark: vessels arrive at Lagos, Apapa, and Tin Can ports fully loaded with import cargo, but depart 97% empty. Repatriating those empty containers to origin ports costs between $2,000 and $4,000 per 20-foot unit. Selling them locally is not just more profitable — it eliminates a significant operational cost. The economic incentive to circumvent customs law is, therefore, built into the very structure of Nigeria’s trade architecture.
A Culture of Impunity: Thirty Years of Accumulated Violations
What makes Ibeke’s intervention especially significant is his charge that this is not a new or isolated problem. He named some of the world’s largest shipping conglomerates — Maersk, MSC, CMA CGM, Hapag-Lloyd, COSCO, ONE, Evergreen, and PIL — as participants in the same pattern of behaviour over the past three decades. These are not fly-by-night operators; they are globally listed corporations with compliance departments and legal teams. Yet in Nigeria, he alleges, they have systematically operated outside the customs law framework with no consequence.
The trade expert linked this culture of impunity to a broader ecosystem of port-related malpractice affecting Nigerian importers and freight forwarders, including arbitrary demurrage and detention charges denominated in foreign currencies, persistent delays in refunding container deposit funds, forced use of nominated transporters, and the withholding of shipping documents until all local charges — legitimate or not — are settled.
Legal Framework: What the Law Says
Ibeke cited multiple statutory provisions that, in his assessment, the practice clearly breaches. Section 36 of the NCS Act 2023 explicitly states that goods brought in under temporary import status must either be re-exported or formally converted to home use with all applicable duties paid. Sections 245, 248, and 249 of the same act empower Customs officers to detain, seize, and impose penalties on goods that do not comply with these conditions.
The CBN Foreign Exchange Manual and Nigerian Shippers’ Council regulations further prohibit dollar-denominated transactions in domestic commercial activities without specific authorisation. The Nigerian Ports Authority’s own temporary import guidelines, Ibeke noted, are fully aligned with the customs law position.
Demands and Recommendations
Ibeke issued a series of specific demands. First, that the NCS immediately suspend all container sales by Grimaldi Agency Nigeria and other shipping lines pending a regulatory review. Second, that the Service conduct a full audit of all containers sold by foreign shipping lines over the past decade, with a view to recovering unpaid duties. Third, that the Federal Ministry of Finance formally investigate the financial exposure and publish findings. Fourth, that the CBN separately investigate the foreign exchange implications of dollar-denominated container sales. And fifth, that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council use its enforcement powers to compel compliance.
He also called on the National Assembly to amend relevant sections of the NCS Act to explicitly criminalise the sale of temporary import containers without prior customs conversion, and to mandate mandatory disclosure by shipping lines of all container disposal activities within Nigerian territory.
Regulatory and Government Response
As of the time of this report, neither the Nigeria Customs Service nor Grimaldi Agency Nigeria had issued a public response to the allegations. The Nigerian Shippers’ Council, which has in recent quarters recovered hundreds of millions of naira from shipping companies over container deposit refund disputes, also had not commented on whether it was investigating the temporary import conversion issue specifically.
It is worth noting that the House of Representatives, in November 2025, announced plans to probe the Customs Service over alleged revenue leakages linked to improper assessment of excise duties, overdue temporary importation, and unremitted customs charges — suggesting that legislative concern over the broader problem of port-related revenue haemorrhage has been building for some time.
The Bigger Picture
Nigeria’s ports have long been a flashpoint for debates over economic sovereignty, regulatory enforcement, and the terms on which foreign corporations operate within the country. The container scandal, if Ibeke’s figures are verified, would rank among the largest sustained customs violations in the country’s history — not because of the individual transaction size, but because of its sheer duration and the breadth of corporate actors allegedly involved.
For a Federal Government that collected an estimated ₦3.8 trillion in customs revenue in 2024 — and that is engaged in an aggressive revenue mobilisation drive to close a fiscal deficit exceeding ₦13 trillion — the loss of ₦600 billion or more to what amounts to customs fraud by multinational shipping companies is a political and economic wound it can ill afford to ignore.
Waterways News (www.waterwaysnews.ng) has reached out to the Nigeria Customs Service, Grimaldi Agency Nigeria, the Nigerian Shippers’ Council, and the Federal Ministry of Finance for official comment. Responses will be published as received.
Blue Economy
Cargo Before Ships: Olubowale Tells Dangote, Big Shippers to Anchor Nigerian Fleet Growth With Long-Term Contracts
Cargo Before Ships: Olubowale Tells Dangote, Big Shippers to Anchor Nigerian Fleet Growth With Long-Term Contracts
Indigenous shipowners have again pressed major Nigerian cargo owners, especially the Dangote Group, to underwrite the growth of a domestic fleet by signing long-term Contracts of Affreightment (CoAs) for petroleum products, cement, fertiliser and other bulk commodities.
The renewed push rests on a simple argument from the shipowners: cargo drives trade, trade attracts financing, and only predictable cargo contracts give shipowners the bankable footing to acquire vessels and grow sustainable fleets.
Captain Ladi Olubowale, former President of the Nigerian chapter of the African Shipowners’ Association and Group Managing Director/CEO of Seamate Maritime Integrated Services Limited, made the case at a Public-Private Dialogue with CEOs organised by the Nigerian Chamber of Shipping in Lagos. The event, themed “Unlocking Efficiency in the Marine and Blue Economy Value Chain,” drew industry leaders, cargo owners, terminal operators and policymakers, with Dangote Group’s Group Vice President, Edwin Devakumar, attending as guest CEO.
Olubowale argued that Nigeria’s maritime strategy has spent too long fixated on vessel ownership in the abstract, when the real task is building the commercial conditions that make indigenous vessel acquisition bankable in the first place. His formulation: give credible Nigerian shipowners long-term CoAs, and those contracts become the foundation on which vessels are financed, acquired and deployed.
He flipped the conventional sequencing — instead of waiting for indigenous firms to buy ships before handing them cargo, he proposed securing the cargo and the contract first, structuring finance around it, and letting qualified Nigerian operators acquire vessels against that guaranteed revenue.
For Dangote specifically, whose refinery, cement, fertiliser and industrial operations already generate heavy maritime cargo volumes, Olubowale sees an opening to become a genuine catalyst for Nigerian fleet development by allocating portions of its cargo requirements to qualified indigenous operators under structured, multi-year CoAs. Such arrangements, he said, would let Nigerian shipowners walk into banks, development finance institutions, export credit agencies, leasing firms and international vessel financiers with something concrete: identifiable cargo, predictable revenue and long-term contracts to show for it.
He extended the argument to crude and refined product haulage, noting that foreign-controlled vessels, including Suezmax tankers, still dominate lifting at Nigerian terminals such as Forcados, Bonny and Escravos, pocketing freight earnings generated by Nigerian-origin cargo. The policy question, in his view, is how Nigeria converts the movement of its own cargo into domestic assets, jobs, technical capacity and long-term economic value.
“There is no structural reason why Nigerian companies should not ultimately own and operate Suezmax tankers and other large commercial vessels,” Olubowale said, framing the goal as deliberate commercial capacity-building rather than protectionism without capability.
He set out a four-pillar model of Cargo, Contract, Finance and Vessel, in which cargo owners supply volumes, long-term CoAs convert those volumes into bankable paper, financial institutions fund the vessel purchases, and Nigerian shipowners supply the ships, crewing and technical management. He said this model would complement, not replace, government-backed tools such as the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), keeping the commercial engine in private hands while government sticks to enabling and regulating.
Olubowale called for sustained dialogue among policymakers, cargo owners, shipowners, terminal operators and financiers, arguing that Nigeria’s cargo base — spanning petroleum products, cement, fertiliser, agriculture and industrial goods, and set to grow further under AfCFTA-driven intra-African trade — is large enough to build a genuinely competitive indigenous shipping industry, if it’s deliberately harnessed rather than left to foreign carriers.
“If we connect Nigerian cargo to Nigerian maritime capacity, we will not merely acquire ships. We will build a sustainable shipping industry,” he said
Nigeria Watch
Olubowale’s cargo-first pitch lands in a familiar gap for Waterways News readers: the distance between policy rhetoric on indigenous fleet-building and the commercial reality that keeps foreign tonnage dominant on Nigerian trade lanes. His four-pillar model is, in effect, a private-sector workaround for a problem the CVFF was meant to solve through government-backed financing and his explicit framing of it as complementary to, not a substitute for, the Fund is notable given how long CVFF disbursement has stalled.
The specific call-out to Dangote is also worth watching. A company generating that volume of captive cargo including refined products, cement and fertiliser could, if it acted on this, become one of the few private actors with the scale to single-handedly seed a viable indigenous tanker or bulk fleet, something years of NIMASA reform announcements have yet to achieve for the sector’s informal and small-scale operators tracked closely in this publication (WABOTAN and ATBOWATON). Whether Dangote or any major shipper, actually commits to multi-year CoAs with Nigerian carriers, rather than continuing to charter foreign tonnage on the open market, will be the real test of whether this dialogue moves beyond another CEO forum.
NPCC: FG’s £746m Apapa, Tin-Can Port Overhaul to Deliver Green, Smart Terminals
The Federal Government’s £746 million facility for the rehabilitation of the Apapa and Tin-Can Island ports is designed to convert both facilities into green and smart ports, with automation and digital systems central to the modernisation drive, the Nigerian Ports Consultative Council (NPCC) has said.
Chairman of the council’s Ports Operations and Security Committee, Capt. Iheanacho Ebubeogu, disclosed this while reviewing port operations and security for the second quarter of 2026, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos on Sunday.
Ebubeogu said the programme would deliver upgraded cargo-handling equipment, cut vessel turnaround and cargo dwell times, and improve environmental sustainability, while also boosting revenue generated from port operations.
He said the rehabilitation extends beyond Lagos, with contracts already awarded for the Escravos breakwaters and Terminals A and C, and the Federal Executive Council approving a channel management consortium to maintain and deepen channels serving the Delta ports.
At Rivers Port, Terminal 1 — operated by PTOL — is undergoing upgrades to berths one to three to improve safety and operational efficiency, Ebubeogu said, while Calabar Port would benefit from increased maintenance dredging. Rehabilitation work at the McKaiva and Malero jetties would also support trade along the eastern corridor.
Inland Dry Ports and Regulatory Reform
Ebubeogu said the administration of inland dry ports had been redesigned, with the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) now overseeing them as landlord in line with its statutory mandate.
He added that the Nigerian Shippers’ Council had formally transitioned into the Nigerian Port Economy Regulatory Agency (NPERA), which will regulate the tariffs, charges and rates imposed by shipping lines and terminal operators.
On expansion, Ebubeogu said site clearing had begun at the Snake Island concession area, part of efforts to grow port capacity, attract investment and strengthen the competitiveness of Nigeria’s maritime sector.
Nigeria Watch
The £746 million figure Ebubeogu cites has been public since March, when the UK and Nigeria signed the UK Export Finance-backed facility during President Tinubu’s Downing Street meeting with Prime Minister Keir Starmer — a deal structured through Citibank and carrying a UK-content requirement (steel supply from British Steel, and roughly 20 percent of project components sourced from UK firms). What Ebubeogu’s Q2 review adds is confirmation that the long-delayed financing has finally cleared its bureaucratic bottlenecks and construction is understood to be starting, after similar timelines slipped in 2024 and earlier in 2026.
For Waterways News readers tracking the gap between announcement and delivery, three things are worth watching. First, the NPERA transition Ebubeogu references is not a minor administrative footnote — it is the operational birth of the tariff regulator created under the NPERA Act, and how it exercises its new powers over shipping lines and terminal operators will matter more to importers and freight forwarders than the port-modernisation headlines.
Second, the shift of inland dry ports to NPA landlord administration touches directly on jurisdictional questions this desk has followed closely amid the NIWA-LASWA disputes — a redesign of who administers dry ports is a governance story in its own right, not just an infrastructure update.
Third, Snake Island site clearing is an early-stage signal only; NPCC and NPA statements on new capacity have a long history of preceding, sometimes by years, any visible construction.
None of the eastern-corridor commitments — Calabar dredging, McKaiva and Malero jetty rehabilitation — come with disclosed timelines or budgets in this briefing, a pattern familiar to operators along the Delta and eastern waterways who have waited through successive administrations for the Escravos breakwater reconstruction alone.
Waterways News will continue tracking disbursement and delivery timelines against Ebubeogu’s Q2 claims in subsequent quarterly reviews.
Blue Economy
Apapa’s Export Gambit: APM Terminals Bets on Round-the-Clock Barges, Rail to Break Cargo Logjam
Apapa’s Export Gambit: APM Terminals Bets on Round-the-Clock Barges, Rail to Break Cargo Logjam
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
APM Terminals Apapa says it is moving to unclog one of the most persistent chokepoints in Nigeria’s export trade, unveiling plans to run barge operations at its Finger Jetty around the clock from the fourth quarter of 2026, alongside an ambitious push to shift up to 60 per cent of its export containers onto rail.
The disclosures were made at the third edition of the terminal’s Exporters Forum, themed “Exports – Voice of Customers Forum,” which drew exporters, shipping lines, logistics operators, regulators and academics to Lagos to dissect the bottlenecks still weighing down Nigeria’s export supply chain.
Head of Commercial at APM Terminals Apapa, Kayode Olufemi-Daniel, told the gathering that the terminal was working backward from the pain points exporters actually face, rather than imposing solutions from the top. He described a process of mapping root causes with stakeholders and building a joint action plan to lift export volumes.
At the centre of that plan is the dedicated Finger Jetty, which will begin 24-hour barge operations in the last quarter of the year. The facility will handle both inbound and outbound containers, giving customers round-the-clock capacity to move export cargo in, evacuate imports, and bring in empty containers, a marked departure, Olufemi-Daniel said, from the days when barging competed for space on the terminal’s main quay.
Terminal management framed the expansion as part of a broader campaign to lure exporters back to Apapa and support the Federal Government’s push to diversify the economy away from oil.
Rail is the other pillar of the strategy. Key Client Manager Adesoji Olaniyan said the terminal currently runs evacuation arrangements through two rail locations, each handling roughly three weekly calls, with trains carrying about 60 TEUs apiece. Internal assessments, he said, continue to show rail as the most cost-effective evacuation option available to the terminal, underpinning its 60-per-cent target.
Stakeholders at the forum credited APM Terminals with sustaining an open channel for feedback and progress-tracking. COSCO Shipping Lines Nigeria’s Precious Idika pointed to the terminal’s Team View portal as a genuine simplifier for gating and payment processes, while Lagos Business School’s Prof. Frank Ojadi urged the terminal to replicate the model beyond Lagos, in export-producing hubs such as Kano and Port Harcourt. Representatives of Maersk Line, British American Tobacco Nigeria, PIL Nigeria, Allround Cargo Company and Star Living Nigeria also acknowledged visible operational improvements.
Nigeria Watch
For a sector Waterways News tracks closely — the fortunes of small-scale and cooperative waterway operators who move much of the cargo between Apapa’s berths and the wider Lagos waterway network — APM Terminals’ 24-hour barging expansion is worth watching beyond the headline. A dedicated jetty running around the clock means more berthing windows and, potentially, more work for the barge operators and cooperative associations, including outfits like WABOTAN and ATBOWATON, that service container movement in and out of Apapa. Whether that additional capacity translates into fairer scheduling and payment terms for informal and cooperative operators — as opposed to simply absorbing more volume for the terminal’s own commercial benefit — will be the real test of this initiative’s impact on the ground.
It is also a reminder of the structural imbalance this desk has flagged repeatedly: private terminal operators like APM Terminals can unilaterally expand infrastructure and set the terms of engagement, while NIWA’s regulatory framework for the inland waterway operators who plug into that infrastructure remains comparatively under-resourced. Prof. Ojadi’s call to extend the Apapa model to Kano and Port Harcourt is well made, but Waterways News would add that any replication should come with parallel investment in the waterway-side capacity including vessels, jetties, and safety standards that feeds these terminals, not just the terminal gates themselves.
Nigeria’s non-oil export ambitions cannot rest on rail and barge announcements alone; they depend on the informal operators who still move a large share of that cargo having a stake in how the gains are shared.
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