FIC REPORT (LAGOS STATE) – Nigeria’s National Port Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA) is preparing to enforce its new 2026 regulatory Act with heavy fines and criminal prosecution, signalling a harder line on non-compliance across the maritime sector that has already prompted the Maritime Anti-Corruption Network (MACN) to move toward aligning its own operations with the new directives.
Director-General and CEO of NPERA, Dr Pius Akutah Ukeyima, laid out the agency’s posture on Tuesday at its Lagos headquarters, during a courtesy visit by an MACN delegation led by the network’s Executive Director, Mrs Cecilia Müller Torbrand. His message was unambiguous: non-compliance would no longer be tolerated.
Akutah framed the new legislation as a decisive break from the legacy Nigerian Shippers’ Council Act, which he described as merely persuasive and lacking real enforcement power. In his account, the new framework replaces that soft-touch approach with a rigid culture of deterrence, aimed squarely at corruption and unethical practices around freight, tariffs, charges and service delivery at Nigeria’s ports.
He offered a look at how that deterrence will be built, disclosing that NPERA will stand up a dedicated Enforcement Department staffed by elite security operatives embedded within, and answerable directly to, the agency — a structure he said is designed to guarantee compliance and close off any risk of regulatory compromise. Even with that expanded enforcement muscle, Akutah said NPERA intends to deepen its Memorandum of Understanding with MACN, including standing up a high-functioning Help Desk with clear escalation channels for reporting infractions and benchmarking Nigerian port operations against global best practice.
For her part, Mrs Torbrand said MACN’s mission to make maritime trade more efficient sits comfortably alongside Nigeria’s Blue Economy ambitions.
Heading a global alliance of more than 200 maritime entities committed to zero tolerance for corruption, she pointed to MACN’s presence in Nigeria since 2012 as a vantage point from which the network has watched real progress unfold, particularly, she said, under a government willing to listen and to encourage private-sector compliance. “You should see us as a partner, but also as a mediator between the public and private sectors. We bring intelligence, experience, and a global membership that can inspire discussions on how ports can run more efficiently,” she said.
MACN’s Nigerian representative and CEO of the Convention on Business Integrity, Mr Soji Apampa, credited the network’s Collective Action framework — built around an anonymous incident-reporting system and close coordination with regulators — with curbing extortion at Nigeria’s domestic gateways.
He traced that work back to 2012, when MACN began partnering with the legacy Nigerian Shippers’ Council, port authorities and private operators on joint risk assessments and Standard Operating Procedures aimed at driving transparency. The Port Standing Task Team and the original Help Desk, he said, both emerged directly from that advocacy, built specifically to strip out operational bottlenecks.
“We have seen progress, but we need to sustain the momentum. The establishment of NPERA with clear enforcement powers is a gamechanger.
MACN is ready to support NPERA with data, global experience, and training to ensure that the Help Desk becomes more functional, reports are escalated transparently, and outcomes are measurable,” Apampa said, adding that MACN would keep sensitising the shipping industry to NPERA’s new regulatory protocols in the hope of lifting Nigeria’s standing on global ease-of-doing-business rankings.
Closing the engagement, Akutah welcomed MACN’s commitment, describing the moment as the start of a decisive new chapter for fast-tracking growth in the country’s Blue Economy. He credited the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Dr Adegboyega Oyetola, with having resolved long-running inter-agency rivalries — clearing the way, in his telling, for a more unified push across the sector.
Dimaka Chioma
Deputy Director
Information/Public Relations.
