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.
Editor's Choice
RUSSIA’S ARCTIC OIL GAMBLE: WHAT AN ICEBREAKER FLEET TEACHES A REGION THAT STILL FIGHTS PIRATES WITH GUNBOATS
RUSSIA’S ARCTIC OIL GAMBLE: WHAT AN ICEBREAKER FLEET TEACHES A REGION THAT STILL FIGHTS PIRATES WITH GUNBOATS
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
Russia has just done something no country bordering the Gulf of Guinea could attempt: it built an entire alternative shipping corridor, armed it with nuclear icebreakers, and is now using it to route around the world’s most contested waters. For West African maritime observers, the story is not really about oil. It is about what state capacity buys a country when global shipping lanes turn hostile and what its absence costs one.
A CONVOY BUILT TO DODGE THE WORLD’S HOTSPOTS
More than a dozen Suezmax, Aframax and Medium Range tankers are currently transiting or staged along Russia’s Northern Sea Route, carrying crude that analysts estimate at roughly 8 million barrels, already more than half the total volume Russia moved during the entirety of last year’s four-month Arctic navigation season. The largest cluster has formed in the Kara Sea, where the Suezmax Dinasty and five Aframax tankers are holding position, likely awaiting nuclear icebreaker escort or better ice conditions before pushing east toward Asian buyers.
Independent tracking data corroborates the scale of the buildup. Vessel-tracking figures show at least seven tankers involved in Russia’s eastbound Arctic crude campaign, with five Aframax tankers and another vessel holding position while one tanker had already begun its eastbound transit, together capable of carrying roughly 5 million barrels of crude. Russia shipped 4.16 million barrels a day of crude in the four weeks to July 26, with tankers beginning to use the Northern Sea Route to China as Arctic ice retreats, part of a broader pattern of Russian crude sidestepping Red Sea risk.
THREE NUCLEAR ICEBREAKERS, ONE STRATEGIC CALCULATION
Moscow has deployed three nuclear-powered icebreakers, Sibir, Yakutiya and Ural, along the route this season, with Ural stationed near Wrangel Island, a choke point that has slowed convoys for two consecutive summers. The route shaves thousands of nautical miles off the journey between northwest Russia and Asia compared with the Suez Canal, but it is navigable to conventional tankers only for a few summer months, and even then only with heavy icebreaker support.
Russia is leaning on that seasonal window precisely because its conventional options have narrowed. The push helps Moscow sustain historically high export rates while avoiding the pitfalls of sailing through Houthi-threatened Red Sea waters, on top of continuing tension around the Strait of Hormuz and Ukraine’s demonstrated reach against Russian energy infrastructure and tankers.
It is worth noting, however, that the Arctic route has not been Russia’s unqualified success story. An analysis published earlier this year found that cargo volumes on the Northern Sea Route actually fell for the first time since 2022, dropping to 37 million tons in 2025 against an official target of 80 million tons, a reminder that ambition and icebreakers alone do not guarantee results, even for a state willing to spend billions building Arctic infrastructure.
THE GULF OF GUINEA COMPARISON NO ONE IS MAKING
Here is the part of the story West African readers should sit with. Russia’s answer to shipping-lane insecurity was to engineer an entirely new corridor, pouring state capital into a fleet of nuclear icebreakers so that geography itself becomes a strategic asset. Nigeria and its Gulf of Guinea neighbours face a comparable insecurity problem, but with none of that infrastructure to fall back on.
Piracy in the Gulf of Guinea has fallen from its mid-2010s peak, credited in part to Nigeria’s Deep Blue Project, NIMASA’s expanded intelligence and patrol capacity, and coordination among regional navies. Yet the region accounted for 92 percent of all crew kidnappings recorded globally in 2025, with 23 seafarers taken hostage, up from 12 the year before, and analysts still point to limited naval patrols and porous coastal borders as unresolved weaknesses.
Nigeria has responded this year by deepening security partnerships, including a new naval cooperation arrangement with the United Arab Emirates covering intelligence sharing, technology transfer and indigenous shipbuilding, while regional navies have moved to activate a Combined Maritime Task Force for the Gulf of Guinea.
Those are real steps. But they remain fundamentally reactive, protecting an existing corridor rather than building an alternative one. Russia’s Arctic convoy shows what the other end of that spectrum looks like, a state treating maritime routing itself as a lever of economic survival, at a cost of tens of billions of dollars and a fleet of icebreakers most nations could never justify.
THE TAKEAWAY FOR NIGERIAN MARITIME POLICY
The lesson is not that Nigeria should chase Arctic-scale infrastructure as geography and economics make that irrelevant here. The lesson is narrower and more urgent. Global shipping is entering an era where major exporters are actively re-routing around instability rather than simply insuring against it. If the Gulf of Guinea’s own security gaps persist while global shippers have more alternative corridors than ever to choose from, the region risks losing traffic not because vessels were attacked, but because they were rerouted before they ever arrived.
For a corridor that already competes with Russian, Gulf and North African crude for the same Asian buyers, that is not an abstract risk. It is a market-share question with a naval-capacity answer.
MARITIME TRADE & SHIPPING
GASLOG SHANGHAI ATTACK: HOW A DISABLED TANKER IN HORMUZ IS QUIETLY REWRITING NIGERIA’S PLACE ON THE GLOBAL GAS MAP
GASLOG SHANGHAI ATTACK: HOW A DISABLED TANKER IN HORMUZ IS QUIETLY REWRITING NIGERIA’S PLACE ON THE GLOBAL GAS MAP
Hormuz burns, Bonny profits. The paradox at the heart of the world’s most dangerous energy chokepoint
An LNG carrier lay disabled and drifting off the coast of Oman this weekend after being struck by an unidentified projectile. This is the latest casualty in a conflict thousands of kilometres from the Niger Delta that is nonetheless reshaping where the world buys its gas, and from whom.
THE STRIKE
The Bermuda-flagged GasLog Shanghai was hit roughly 11 nautical miles northeast of Oman on 31 July while transiting the strait’s southern corridor, the route where the United States provides guided passage for commercial shipping. The vessel was disabled after the strike. GasLog’s Greece-based operator confirmed the ship was hit by an unknown projectile that caused a power outage, adding that no crew members were injured and a resulting fire was extinguished.
Notably, the tanker had stopped transmitting its tracking signal on July 31 near the western entrance of Hormuz, a detail that has drawn scrutiny from shipping analysts, since it appears the vessel went dark shortly before it was struck. The UK Maritime Trade Operations authority had alerted that a vessel was struck in the strait off the Omani coast overnight, without initially identifying it; there was no environmental impact so far, UKMTO said. A separate tanker reported an explosion nearby without sustaining damage.
The attack was not isolated. The Gaslog Shanghai is the second LNG carrier owned by Gaslog to be hit in recent days. The Gaslog Salem was struck by a drone while at berth in Damietta, Egypt, at the same time as the FSRU Energos Winter on an adjacent berth. Iran has repeatedly disputed the legitimacy of the Omani transit corridor and has continued to threaten the security of vessels using the route.
WHY A STRIKE OFF OMAN MATTERS ON THE NIGER DELTA COAST
It is tempting to read this as a Gulf story with no bearing on Bonny, Brass or Warri. That reading is wrong.
The Strait of Hormuz carries close to 20% of global liquefied natural gas trade, alongside roughly 27% of the world’s maritime trade in crude oil and petroleum products. Any disruption there sends buyers scrambling for alternative supply and Nigeria, as Africa’s largest LNG exporter, sits directly in that scramble’s path.
This is not theoretical. During the earlier phase of the Hormuz crisis this year, cargo-tracking data showed Nigerian LNG shipments already being redirected toward Asia rather than their usual European destinations. Vessels including the 148,000 m³ LNG Ondo and 141,000 m³ LNG Adamawa were among the first cargoes to shift toward the Pacific Basin as Hormuz remained effectively shut, part of a broader rebalancing of global LNG flows. A Europe-bound cargo aboard the BW Brussels was reportedly diverted to Asia for the same reason.
In plain terms, every projectile that hits a tanker off Oman raises the odds that a buyer in Tokyo or Rotterdam picks up the phone to Bonny Island instead of Ras Laffan. Nigeria’s gas sector stands to gain export volume and pricing leverage from a war it has no part in. But that same exposure means Nigerian-lifted cargoes, and the waterways that feed them, inherit a sliver of Hormuz’s risk profile the moment they enter contested or opportunistic shipping lanes.
THE MARKET IS ALREADY REACTING
The Shanghai incident landed in a market still raw from a March closure of the strait that removed close to 20% of global LNG supply and triggered sharp price increases across key importing regions. Analysts have already tied this weekend’s strike to renewed volatility, with oil prices recording their biggest gains since March amid the escalating regional conflict.
For Nigerian producers and NLNG offtakers, that volatility cuts two ways. Higher benchmark prices in Asia and Europe mean stronger returns on every cargo that clears Bonny safely. But it also means heightened incentive for opportunistic actors, from pirates to protection racketeers, to test the vulnerabilities of Nigeria’s own export corridors while global attention and naval assets are stretched thin defending Hormuz.
THE UNANSWERED QUESTION
GasLog has not disclosed the full extent of the Shanghai’s damage, and it remains unclear whether the strike is linked to either of the two separate UKMTO warnings issued in the same window. What is clear is that the vessel had gone dark on tracking systems in the hours before impact — raising questions security analysts have not yet resolved about who else may have known its position, and why.
For a Nigerian maritime audience, the lesson is less about Hormuz itself than about exposure by proxy. Every barrel and every cubic metre that Nigeria ships out to fill the gap left by a wounded Gulf trade route is a reminder that this country’s waterways are no longer a regional afterthought — they are becoming a pressure valve for a global energy system under fire, whether Abuja and NIMASA have fully reckoned with that role or not.
Blue Economy
HOW WEST AFRICA BECAME RUSSIA’S FLAG OF CONVENIENCE: THE TOA PAYOH BOARDING AND THE COTONOU-TO-ISTANBUL SANCTIONS PIPELINE
HOW WEST AFRICA BECAME RUSSIA’S FLAG OF CONVENIENCE: THE TOA PAYOH BOARDING AND THE COTONOU-TO-ISTANBUL SANCTIONS PIPELINE
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
An Italian naval helicopter dropped a boarding team onto the deck of the tanker Toa Payoh on Sunday morning, west of the Sicilian island of Pantelleria, in a two-hour operation that briefly halted a vessel that had left the Beninese port of Cotonou on July 16 bound for Istanbul. The ship’s master reportedly resisted cooperating at first. By the time the Italian Navy’s Thaon di Revel released it, the tanker had become the latest exhibit in a maritime story that increasingly runs through African ports, not just Russian ones.
The Toa Payoh was sailing under a Cameroonian flag it had registered only days earlier. That single fact, more than the boarding itself, is what should concern readers across West and Central Africa’s maritime corridor. It is not a European story that happens to mention Africa. It is an African maritime governance failure that Europe is now policing at sea because African institutions have not closed the gap onshore.
WHAT HAPPENED OFF PANTELLERIA
Italy’s Defence Ministry said personnel from Operation EUNAVFOR MED Irini intercepted the Toa Payoh, an EU-sanctioned tanker, to verify whether it was legally entitled to fly the Cameroonian flag it had adopted. The inspection, backed by a Greek vessel and a Polish maritime patrol aircraft, was carried out under Article 110 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which permits a warship to check the nationality documents of a merchant vessel on the high seas.
Irini does not have the mandate to seize ships during these boardings, so the Toa Payoh was released once the inspection concluded. Documentation collected on board is being reviewed and could support a future sequestration by national authorities. There was no immediate response from Moscow.
This was the second such Irini boarding in under two weeks. On July 20, the same Italian patrol vessel intercepted the MV South Star southeast of Sicily, also over suspicions of false flagging. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas has framed the boardings as an escalation of Brussels’ campaign against tankers that keep Russian oil moving despite sanctions imposed since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
THE AFRICAN REGISTRY AT THE CENTRE OF THE STORY
What Sunday’s boarding underlines, and what most coverage outside Africa has treated as a footnote, is that Russia’s shadow fleet has increasingly gone shopping for African flags. Cameroon’s ship registry grew by roughly 126 percent over the past year, driven in large part by the rapid listing of high-risk tankers tied to sanctioned Russian trade. Cameroon now ranks among the top three states associated with the shadow fleet, alongside Russia itself and Sierra Leone.
Cameroon is not alone. Registries in Benin, the Gambia, Comoros, Guinea and Sierra Leone have all seen sharp increases in registered tonnage as operators squeezed out of established flag states look for jurisdictions with weaker verification. The Toa Payoh’s own voyage traces that pattern almost exactly: it departed from Cotonou, a Beninese port, flying a Cameroonian flag it had picked up only the week before it was stopped.
Cameroonian authorities have acknowledged the problem is bigger than any single vessel. Facing EU pressure, Yaoundé has suspended new registrations for vessels operating outside its territorial waters, ordered an audit of its ship registry under the Prime Minister’s Office, and delisted dozens of vessels linked to the shadow fleet. Officials and maritime security researchers say the registry’s vulnerabilities go beyond simple negligence: some vessels are registered through opaque intermediaries who monetise the process without proper vetting, while others fraudulently claim the Cameroonian flag using stolen or forged digital documentation, sometimes with help from within the country’s own maritime administration.
WHY THIS MATTERS BEYOND SANCTIONS ENFORCEMENT
For Nigeria and its neighbours along the Gulf of Guinea, this is not simply a European sanctions story playing out far away. Every fraudulent or poorly vetted registration under a West or Central African flag carries reputational cost for legitimate shipping registered under the same flags, and it hands foreign navies justification to board vessels flying African colours in international waters. It also exposes how thin the region’s regulatory and monitoring capacity remains relative to the volume of tonnage now seeking cover under its registries.
The Toa Payoh’s captain resisting a boarding party in the Mediterranean is a dramatic image, but the more consequential failure happened earlier and closer to home: at the point of registration, where a tanker linked to a sanctioned network was able to obtain Cameroonian papers within days, and where its port of departure was a West African harbour rather than a Russian one. Until African maritime administrations close that gap, with better digital verification, tighter control over registration agents, and enforcement against forged documentation, vessels like the Toa Payoh will keep using African flags as the path of least resistance, and it will keep being European warships, not African regulators, providing the accountability.
Irini was launched in 2020 to enforce a UN arms embargo on Libya. EU governments have since widened its mandate to authorise these verification boardings, a mission creep that reflects how central the Mediterranean has become to enforcing sanctions that originate in European capitals but increasingly implicate African maritime sovereignty.
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