Blue Economy
Between Safety and Survival: Inside NIWA’s Uneasy Push to Modernise Nigeria’s Waterways
Between Safety and Survival: Inside NIWA’s Uneasy Push to Modernise Nigeria’s Waterways
By Oghenewoke Osaweren | Waterways News
The arithmetic driving federal policy is grim: wooden boats make up more than 90 percent of vessels on Nigeria’s inland waterways, and they account for the majority of the accidents that keep claiming lives from Niger State to Kogi to Yobe. For the men and women who own, build, and pilot those same boats, the arithmetic looks different. It is the difference between feeding a family this week and not.
That tension sits at the centre of one of the most consequential regulatory shifts facing Nigeria’s inland waterways sector: a federally-backed campaign to phase wooden boats out of commercial water transportation altogether. Nearly two years after it was first floated, the policy is still gradual, still underfunded from the operators’ point of view, and now being carried forward by a leadership at the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) that looks markedly different from the one that started it.
A policy that has outlasted its author
The phase-out campaign was launched in October 2024 by then NIWA Managing Director Bola Oyebamiji, who told journalists in Lagos that wooden boats, despite constituting the overwhelming majority of the fleet, were disproportionately responsible for accidents, driven less by the material itself than by disregard for basic rules: night travel, overloading, and non-use of life jackets. Oyebamiji took the campaign further in subsequent months, taking NIWA management to London to explore partnerships with a ferry company for the supply of standard fibre boats, and opening talks with an indigenous manufacturer to produce fibre and aluminium vessels locally.
Oyebamiji, however, is no longer running NIWA. He resigned as Managing Director on November 15, 2025, to pursue the All Progressives Congress governorship ticket in Osun State, for the August 15, 2026 off-cycle election, a race in which Minister of Marine and Blue Economy Adegboyega Oyetola has publicly backed him, citing his NIWA reform record. In his absence, Umar Yusuf Girei, formerly NIWA’s General Manager for Finance, has run the authority in an acting capacity since late 2025, and it is Girei’s administration that has inherited and continued the wooden boat phase-out drive. NIWA also now has a substantive Governing Board, chaired by Barrister Mukhtar Shehu Shagari, which was inaugurated earlier in 2026 and has since toured Lagos facilities reaffirming the commitment to replacing “unsafe vessels” and rehabilitating dilapidated jetties nationwide.
The throughline across both administrations has been consistent even as the faces changed: safety first, wooden boats out, but not overnight. NIWA’s Lagos Area Manager, Engr. Sarat Braimah, has been the most candid public voice on pacing, telling journalists this year that “it is not something that can happen overnight,” and that the authority is working to “meet operators halfway” as safer boats are phased in. This is language that acknowledges, even from inside the regulator, how disruptive an outright ban would be to the informal economy built around wooden hulls.
The operators’ dilemma: capital, not principle
Boat owners are not opposing safety in principle. Where their voice has surfaced publicly, the message has been less “leave our boats alone” and more “help us change them.” Tope Fajemirokun, President of the Waterfront Boat Owners and Transporters Association of Nigeria (WABOTAN), has repeatedly linked compliance to government support, arguing that eliminating wooden and “banana” boats will only be realistic if the state backs the transition with real investment, a position echoed in Lagos and riverine communities where wooden boats remain the dominant, and often only, means of daily transport and commerce. The crux of operator anxiety today is capital.
A standard wooden passenger boat can be built or repaired locally at a fraction of the cost of an aluminium or fibreglass alternative, using skills and materials that have sustained riverine boatbuilding communities for generations. Asking an operator already squeezed by rising fuel costs to self-finance a switch to modern hulls is, in practice, asking many of them to exit the trade entirely.
The government’s own promised bridge, a Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy-backed fund of roughly N14.6 billion for the purchase of standard boats and ferries for riverine states including Niger, Benue, Kogi, Kwara, and Kebbi, has been public knowledge for months, but operators are still waiting. As of June 2026, WABOTAN’s Fajemirokun was still calling for soft loans to be carved out of the approved funds so operators could actually acquire modern vessels, citing fuel costs and broader economic pressure as barriers to self-financing the transition. Separately, NIWA’s own 2026 capital budget earmarked N16 billion for waterways maintenance, boat procurement, and related capital projects, a sum equal to the agency’s combined capital allocations for 2022, 2023, and 2024, but one that Daily Trust and other outlets have noted has not yet translated into a visible reduction in fatal boat crashes.
A test of governance, not just carpentry
There is also a quieter unease among operators about how the phase-out will be enforced and who decides its pace. With wooden boats forming the overwhelming majority of the fleet, a poorly sequenced rollout risks stranding thousands of small operators, many with limited formal education, as NIWA’s own former leadership has pointedly noted, without a bridge into the formal, regulated fleet the government envisions.
Whether the policy becomes a managed transition or another top-down mandate that outruns the capacity of those it targets will be measured less in press statements from Abuja and Lagos than in whether the fibreglass and aluminium boats promised actually reach the jetties. Nigeria’s waterways governance has a long record of ambitious safety directives that stall at the point of implementation, leaving enforcement to fall unevenly on the smallest operators while larger interests adapt more easily. The leadership transition at NIWA, an acting MD, a newly inaugurated board, a former champion of the policy now running for governor, adds a further variable: continuity of political will through a change of guard that has, so far, kept the phase-out on the agenda but has not accelerated the disbursement operators say they need.
Nigeria Watch
For Waterways News readers tracking the sector closely, three threads are worth following in the coming months. First, whether the N14.6 billion vessel procurement fund, approved but still largely not disbursed as of mid-2026, begins reaching operators directly or continues to move at the pace of ministerial announcements. Second, whether NIWA’s new Governing Board under Shagari, having completed its facility inspection tour, converts its stated commitments into a published timeline with short, medium, and long-term milestones, as originally promised by Oyebamiji in 2024. Third, whether the acting MD arrangement under Girei persists through and beyond the Osun election, or whether a substantive appointment brings fresh priorities that could either accelerate or stall the transition.
For WABOTAN, ATBOWATON, other organized operators, and the riverine communities they serve, the difference between a “phase-out” and a “wipe-out” will be decided in the disbursement ledgers, not the press briefings.
Waterways News will continue to track the phase-out timeline, budgetary commitments, and operator response as the policy moves from directive to implementation.
Blue Economy
Petroleum Products Dominate Lekki Deep Sea Port’s Import Chart as Facility Cements Role in National Energy Supply
Petroleum Products Dominate Lekki Deep Sea Port’s Import Chart as Facility Cements Role in National Energy Supply
By Okeoghene Onoriobe | Waterways News
Crude oil-based products remain the single largest category of cargo moving through Lekki Deep Sea Port, with fresh shipping data underscoring the facility’s growing weight in Nigeria’s petroleum import chain.
Shipping documents covering the first week of August showed that petroleum-related cargo, including aviation fuel, Automated Gas Oil (AGO) and Premium Motor Spirit (PMS), accounted for roughly 1.87 million metric tonnes of the products cleared through the port as of August 10. Aviation fuel led the breakdown with 245,600 metric tonnes, followed by AGO at 104,000 metric tonnes, while the balance of the volume was recorded across other refined product categories. Bulk urea, at 99,000 metric tonnes, was the next-largest non-petroleum commodity handled at the facility during the period.
The figures build on a year in which Lekki Deep Sea Port has steadily overtaken Nigeria’s older terminals in overall cargo significance. Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) data for 2025 showed the port handling roughly 40.6 percent of national cargo throughput, with liquid bulk cargo, petroleum products, fuel and chemicals, making up 54.7 percent of all cargo moved across Nigerian ports that year, ahead of containerised cargo at 24 percent. Container traffic at the port also grew sharply, with import containers rising by close to a third over the same period.
By the end of the third quarter of 2025, Lekki Port had recorded an estimated ₦13.46 trillion in combined import and export trade value, according to figures presented by port management. NPA’s Daily Shipping Position reports through mid-2026 have continued to show a steady stream of tankers arriving at the port carrying petrol, diesel, aviation fuel, condensate and crude oil, alongside bulk carriers moving fertiliser, wheat, sugar and gypsum.
Industry stakeholders have continued to emphasise the importance of efficient port operations in reducing logistics costs, improving cargo movement and strengthening Nigeria’s position as a major maritime hub in the region. With petroleum products accounting for a substantial share of cargo recorded at Lekki, import volumes at the facility are expected to remain closely watched by businesses, consumers and other stakeholders across the downstream petroleum and maritime sectors in the months ahead.
Nigeria Watch: A Single Port, A National Dependency
The scale of petroleum movement through Lekki Deep Sea Port is worth sitting with for a moment. A facility that only became fully operational in 2023 is now handling well over half of all liquid bulk cargo passing through Nigerian ports, and a meaningful share of the aviation fuel, diesel and petrol keeping the country’s transport and energy sectors running. That is a remarkable concentration of national dependency in one deep-water terminal on the Lagos coastline.
There is a case to be made that this is exactly what efficient infrastructure should look like, deeper draft, faster turnaround, automated cargo handling, and the scale to absorb vessels that older terminals like Apapa and Tin Can Island simply cannot berth. Nigeria has spent years talking about reducing the congestion and demurrage costs that have historically plagued its ports, and Lekki’s rise is, on paper, a direct answer to that problem.
But concentration cuts both ways. A downstream sector, refineries, marketers, aviation fuel suppliers, that increasingly routes its imports through a single facility is also a downstream sector exposed to a single point of failure. Any disruption at Lekki, whether from equipment downtime, customs bottlenecks, or the kind of geopolitical shock that has already rattled freight rates and war-risk premiums this year, would ripple through fuel availability nationwide far faster than it would have when cargo was distributed more evenly across Lagos’s ports.
This is also a moment that tests the regulatory architecture around Nigeria’s ports. As NPERA settles into its new role as economic regulator, and as NIMASA, NIWA and NPA continue to work out overlapping jurisdictional lines, the question of who is actually monitoring throughput, pricing and safety standards at Nigeria’s busiest facility deserves more scrutiny than it currently receives.
A port handling this much of the country’s fuel supply is not just a commercial success story. It is critical national infrastructure, and it should be treated with the oversight that designation demands.
Tinubu Signs NPERA Bill Into Law, Ending Years-Long Wait for Statutory Port Regulator
By Raymond Gold | Waterways News
President Bola Tinubu has assented to the Nigerian Ports Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) Bill, 2026, formally establishing a dedicated statutory economic regulator for Nigeria’s port industry after years of legislative back-and-forth.
The development was disclosed by the Executive Secretary and Chief Executive Officer of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Dr Pius Akutah, in a post on his Facebook page. “Nigerian Port Economic Regulatory Agency Act, 2026. Thank you Mr President for making it a reality,” Akutah wrote.
Details of the assent and the accompanying implementation framework were not immediately available at press time, but the signing closes out one of the longest-running items on Nigeria’s port reform agenda.
A regulator years in the making
The new law is designed to give statutory backing to functions the NSC has performed on an interim basis since 2014, when the Federal Government designated the Council as economic regulator of the ports pending a substantive Act. Without dedicated legislation, the Council’s oversight of tariffs, rates and charges rested largely on government policy rather than enforceable statutory powers.
NPERA is expected to take over and strengthen regulation across tariffs, rates and charges, competition in the port sector, licensing of port service providers, and resolution of commercial disputes — areas that have long been sources of friction between shipping lines, terminal operators, freight forwarders and shippers.
A bumpy legislative road
The Bill’s passage was not straightforward. An earlier version cleared the National Assembly and was transmitted to the Presidency, but Tinubu withheld assent after concerns were raised over some of its provisions. The National Assembly went back to work, addressing the flagged issues, and the Senate rescinded its earlier passage after a review turned up further legal and procedural problems requiring correction. An amended version was passed in April 2026, setting up this week’s assent.
Central to the controversy has been the risk of regulatory overlap. Stakeholders and some maritime agencies raised concerns that NPERA’s mandate could duplicate functions already exercised by the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), and have pushed for clearer boundaries to head off conflicting or overlapping mandates. Legal analysts have separately flagged that the Bill, formally the Nigeria Shipping and Port Economic Regulatory Agency Bill, proposes repealing the Nigerian Shippers’ Council Act and transferring its functions to the new agency, effectively splitting economic and commercial oversight of the ports away from the operational and safety mandate the NPA has historically held.
With presidential assent secured, attention now turns to implementation: the transition from the NSC to NPERA, and how the new agency’s structure, leadership and powers will be defined in practice.
Nigeria Watch
For Nigeria’s port and waterway stakeholders, NPERA’s arrival is less a single event than the start of a new phase of institutional bargaining — and one that inland waterway operators, terminal users and cargo owners should watch closely.
The immediate question is jurisdictional. NIMASA already regulates maritime safety, seafarer certification and shipping administration; the NPA runs port operations and infrastructure; NIWA and LASWA govern inland and Lagos waterways respectively. Layering a fourth economic regulator onto tariffs, licensing and dispute resolution raises the same “regulatory layering” risk that critics warned about while the Bill was still in the National Assembly, the danger that compliance costs rise for shippers and operators before any efficiency gains materialise.
Waterways News readers who have followed the CVFF disbursement saga and NIMASA-AMANO tensions will recognise the pattern: a new statutory body with strong powers on paper, but whose real impact depends on how cleanly its mandate is carved out from incumbent agencies.
There is also a stakes question for the smaller operators this publication has consistently centred, WABOTAN, ATBOWATON and similar cooperatives working Lagos’s creeks and Nigeria inland waterways. NPERA’s brief on licensing of port service providers and commercial dispute resolution is written with seaports in mind, but if its remit is interpreted broadly, it could eventually touch licensing and tariff questions that affect waterway transport operators feeding cargo and passengers into the port corridor.
Clarity from the National Assembly and the Presidency on where NPERA’s authority stops and NIWA’s begins will matter as much to canoe and ferry operators as it does to container terminals.
Finally, timing is notable. NPERA’s establishment lands as Nigeria settles back into its seat on the IMO Council and as NIMASA and NIWA prepare for the IMO’s 2027 shift to risk-based continuous monitoring under IMSAS. A fourth regulator entering the port governance space just as the country’s existing agencies are being assessed against international standards adds one more variable to an already crowded institutional picture and one Waterways News will continue tracking as NPERA’s transition takes shape.
Blue Economy
APM Terminals Apapa, NPA Stage Joint Clean-Up of Lagos Port Corridor as Global Go Green Week Kicks Off
APM Terminals Apapa, NPA Stage Joint Clean-Up of Lagos Port Corridor as Global Go Green Week Kicks Off
Exercise targets Finger Jetty, NPA Roundabout and Adekunle Road stretch as terminal operator pushes 2040 net-zero ambition
By Emetena Ikuku | Waterways News
APM Terminals Apapa has renewed its environmental sustainability pledge with a large-scale clean-up of key access roads within the Lagos Port Complex (LPC), as part of its 2026 Go Green Week campaign.
The exercise, which drew employees of the terminal operator alongside staff of the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA), covered the corridor stretching from the Finger Jetty through the common-user road to Eko Support Services, the NPA Roundabout, Adekunle Road and the terminal’s main gate. Workers equipped with cleaning tools and protective gear cleared plastics, nylon packaging, wooden planks, bottles, stones and other debris that had accumulated along the routes.
Go Green Week is APM Terminals’ annual global environmental campaign, designed to translate the company’s binding commitment to achieving net-zero carbon operations by 2040 into ground-level action across its terminal network. This year’s edition carries the theme “Healthy Ecosystems… More Resilient and Sustainable Business,” underscoring the link the company draws between environmental health and business resilience.
Speaking at the exercise, Managing Director of APM Terminals Apapa, Kamal Alhraishat, described Go Green Week as a platform for deepening environmental awareness and driving collective action among port community stakeholders. He noted that employees across APM Terminals’ global operations are being encouraged to convert environmental commitments into practical activity, clean-up campaigns, recycling, tree planting and habitat restoration, and said the involvement of NPA staff in the Apapa exercise reflected the value of stakeholder collaboration in sustaining a cleaner port environment.
Health, Safety and Environment Manager, Felix Ugwuagbo, said sustainability sits at the core of the terminal’s operations and decision-making. He argued that environmental responsibility cannot remain confined to boardroom policy but must be embedded in daily port operations and adopted by all port users if lasting progress is to be achieved. A clean port, he added, translates directly into a safer and more efficient one, with knock-on benefits for trade flow and supply chain resilience.
Assistant Manager, NPA Environment (Lagos Port Complex, Apapa), Umar Ibrahim, commended the initiative, stressing that effective waste management underpins safe and efficient port operations. He said a clean port environment protects public health, preserves the surrounding ecosystem and enables the smooth movement of cargo and personnel, while prompt waste removal reduces environmental hazards and improves air quality for all port users.
Nigeria Watch
For a port corridor as congested and heavily trafficked as Apapa, the symbolism of a joint APM Terminals–NPA clean-up matters as much as the exercise itself. The Finger Jetty–NPA Roundabout–Adekunle Road axis is one of the most contested stretches of road in Nigeria’s maritime sector, a corridor that has, for years, doubled as a case study in the country’s port-access congestion crisis, with truck queues, informal trading activity and haulage debris regularly cited as contributors to gridlock and environmental degradation around the LPC.
That an NPA-branded environmental official joined a terminal operator’s own sustainability drive is notable in a sector where regulator-operator relations are more often defined by friction, over concession terms, tariff disputes or infrastructure funding obligations, than by joint action. Whether this collaboration extends beyond a single clean-up day to sustained waste-management protocols along the corridor will be the more meaningful test.
The exercise also lands against the backdrop of Nigeria’s own decarbonisation posture within the IMO framework, and NIMASA’s stated ambitions around green shipping and environmental compliance. As global terminal operators tie local ESG activity to binding 2040 net-zero targets, Nigerian port authorities and operators, NPA, NIMASA and private concessionaires alike, face growing pressure to demonstrate that similar environmental accountability applies not just to corporate campaigns, but to routine port and waterway operations across Lagos, the Niger Delta and beyond.
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