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To persuade the international insurance market to remove the war risk premium imposed on commercial vessels coming to Nigeria, the country must develop a comprehensive maritime security framework backed by credible and verifiable data, the President of the Maritime Security Providers Association of Nigeria (MASPAN), Mr Emmanuel Maiguwa, has said.
Reacting to the recent United States’ decision to ease additional security measures imposed on vessels arriving from Nigeria, which was a positive development, he cautioned against interpreting the move as a complete clearance of Nigeria’s security concerns in the international maritime community.
In an interview, Maiguwa explained the implications of the US security regime for vessels bound for Nigeria, stressing that the easing of additional measures should not be mistaken for the total elimination of security risks associated with Nigerian waters.
He also clarified why improved maritime security does not automatically translate into shorter vessel turnaround time, noting that several operational and regulatory factors continue to affect efficiency at Nigerian ports.
According to him, Nigeria must go beyond isolated security interventions and establish a coordinated maritime security framework capable of generating reliable data and demonstrating measurable improvements in the country’s security environment. Such evidence, he argued, would be critical to convincing international insurers to review the war risk premium imposed on Nigerian-bound vessels.
Maiguwa also spoke extensively on the security challenges confronting the sector, including piracy, stowaways, drug trafficking, port access control, the Deep Blue Project, boat registration and tracking, as well as gaps in Nigeria’s broader maritime security architecture.
The United States recently relaxed some of the additional security measures imposed on vessels coming from Nigeria. What exactly does this mean for the Nigerian maritime industry?
I don’t think we should interpret it as the complete elimination of security scrutiny. From what I have read, what has happened is that the security level has been lowered, not completely eliminated.
The United States has a very robust security system. After the September 11 attacks, the U.S. realised that whatever security system they had within the country was not sufficient to deter threats because the planning and organisation of the attack took place outside the United States, where they had no control over the security systems operating in those jurisdictions.
So the U.S. went to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and pushed for member states to adopt a similar minimum security standard. That eventually became the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code.
But ISPS is really a minimum standard. It is designed to ensure that even the weakest link can comply. It does not necessarily mean that the minimum standard will be sufficient to address the peculiar security threats of every country.
That is why the U.S. Coast Guard continues to inspect countries that implement ISPS. If a country does not comply, vessels coming from that country can face additional security measures when they arrive in the United States.
There was a time Nigeria was threatened with such a situation. We had to improve our security architecture and eventually obtained approval for vessels coming from Nigeria, although they were still subjected to heightened security screening.
So, what has happened now, from my understanding, is that some of those additional measures have been reduced.
Does that mean vessels coming from Nigeria will no longer face security screening in the United States?
No. There is no vessel anywhere in the world that will arrive at a U.S. port without being scrutinised. The level of scrutiny may vary from country to country and from vessel to vessel.
For example, if we say hypothetically that a vessel coming from Nigeria was previously screened against a very high security level, the U.S. may now have reduced some of those additional requirements. But that same vessel can still be subjected to a higher level of screening if the authorities have other reasons to consider it a security concern.
The important point is that it will not necessarily be subjected to additional security procedures simply because it is coming from Nigeria.
It is similar to Port State Control. There are circumstances where a vessel that has recently been inspected in one port may not ordinarily be inspected again within a particular period. But if another Port State Control officer sees something that gives him probable cause, he still has the right to board and inspect the vessel.
So, this is not an exemption from security. It is essentially a reduction in the additional burden imposed on vessels because they are coming from Nigeria.
Some people have described this as a major boost for Nigeria because it could improve turnaround time and reduce costs. Do you agree?
I think it is definitely positive, but I don’t want us to assume too much until we get feedback from the international shipping companies that actually operate the Nigeria-U.S. route.
I want to speak to some of the shipping companies whose vessels regularly sail from Nigeria to the United States and find out what kind of security screening burden they have been experiencing and what has changed now.
That is important because sometimes I would actually prefer that my ship is subjected to a higher security level if that gives me greater assurance that my vessel and crew are safe.
When you talk about turnaround time, we also have to understand that we are talking about an advanced country with enormous resources and technology.
The United States can conduct security inspections without necessarily interfering with the vessel’s operational time. The Coast Guard can board a vessel while it is waiting for a pilot and complete its inspection there.
They can also conduct remote surveillance. They have drones and other technologies. They can study the vessel’s movement, trade pattern and other available information before boarding.
So, by the time they physically board the vessel, the inspection may be limited to specific areas of concern.
If the U.S. system allows a vessel to be screened without unnecessarily affecting turnaround time, then we should learn from that rather than simply celebrating the fact that a particular security requirement has been reduced.
You have consistently argued that Nigeria’s maritime security problem is bigger than piracy. What are the indicators you are looking at?
There are several indicators of weaknesses in maritime security infrastructure.
If your maritime security infrastructure is weak, you will see high levels of human and drug trafficking. You will see stowaways. You will see robbery and theft involving maritime assets. These are indicators of poor maritime security. But they do not automatically constitute war risk. War risk becomes a different issue when the lives of seafarers are threatened in a manner that triggers the London War Risk Committee’s consideration.
The war risk insurance itself came out of actual war. The reason piracy was brought under the same insurance consideration is because the impact on a seafarer during war and the impact of robbery or piracy at sea can be similar.
The shipowner and the seafarer can face serious risks in both situations.
Why has Nigeria continued to pay war risk insurance even after the decline in piracy?
That is the difficult question. When the threat became active and piracy was being recorded, the international insurance market had justification to include the region.
But the fact that piracy has declined does not automatically mean the international market will immediately remove the premium. The question they are asking is: What gives us the confidence that the threat cannot return.
That is why I have always said that publishing figures or making declarations that piracy has disappeared is not enough. We need to build a framework that works and then get the international community to understand that framework. Until we do that, war risk insurance is not going anywhere simply because we make public statements.
But Nigeria has invested heavily in the Deep Blue Project. Why do you think the country has not been able to conclusively establish what brought piracy down?
If we are being honest with ourselves, nobody can boldly say this is exactly how piracy disappeared. We did not take enough time to understand where the piracy was coming from in the first place. There were different theories. Some people believed cargo owners or shipowners were involved. Others pointed to government interests, militants or even members of vessel crews. We never really established conclusively what the root cause was. Then we invested money in the Deep Blue Project and began deploying the assets. Subsequently, people started saying it was the Deep Blue Project that chased piracy away. But if we want to understand what actually happened, we need to look at the dates, the interventions and the different security operations that took place. There were prosecutions. There were interventions by different actors.
The Deep Blue Project had assets, including the Deep Blue Abuja and Deep Blue Lagos, but there were also limitations. One of the assets returned while another had operational problems for years.
There were intervention boats, aircraft and helicopters, but some of these assets had limitations and were operating within a complicated security architecture involving different agencies. There was collaboration with the Navy, but it took a long time to agree on the administrative architecture for how the system would work. So, we should be careful about saying that one asset or one agency alone eliminated piracy.
You also mentioned the role of local interventions and security operations that may not have received enough attention. What do you mean?
There were interventions in certain areas that people may not have heard about. For instance, there were interventions by Tantita in some areas, although they were not always publicised. Some of the people kept away from the waterways were not the traditional pirates who would hijack vessels and siphon cargo. Their method was to attack vessels, take the crew into the creeks and demand ransom. Then there were those who would take vessels away and the vessel would later reappear without its cargo. We still don’t have a complete understanding of who all those actors were. But the basic issue remains: before anybody can get to a ship, take its crew, sail the ship away or steal cargo, that person must have access to the maritime domain. These people do not come from the bottom of the sea. They come from the shore. So the question we should ask is: What have we done in our maritime domain to ensure that, even if somebody wants to attack a ship, he cannot simply gain access to it? That is where our security architecture must become stronger.
Is lack of data also contributing to Nigeria’s difficulty in convincing the international community that maritime security has improved?
Absolutely. They have data that we don’t have. Today, I have decided that I am going to invest in building the data myself. I have established an IT department because we need to build a robust maritime data system. There are incidents that happen on Nigerian waters or involving vessels that leave Nigerian ports which we may never hear about. For example, we only know about the stowaway cases that are reported to the police, Navy or other Nigerian agencies. But there are cases where a vessel has sailed to another port and reported an incident to an international security or insurance network. Some incidents are known to the owners and their security managers but never become public. There are even cases where people have died onboard vessels and the international security network knows about them, but we may never hear about them in Nigeria. When you sit with international players and they are comfortable enough to show you their data, you discover that the picture is much bigger than what we have domestically. I said at an industry event that there is a stowaway case every week out of Lagos Port. If we don’t know about it, that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And a stowaway itself is an indicator that your port can be accessed by people who should not be there.
If piracy has declined, why should the international insurance market remain concerned?
Because the insurance market is looking beyond what is happening today. They are asking what happens if piracy returns tomorrow. If Nigeria is removed from the war risk list and vessels start sailing without the additional cover, and somebody attacks a vessel, who bears the risk? That fear is what continues to come to the table. So we have to address the underlying concern. We need to develop a security framework that the international community can understand and trust. That framework has to demonstrate that if Nigeria is removed from the additional war risk arrangement, there is a system in place that will prevent an attacker from simply gaining access to a vessel.
You have compared Nigeria’s maritime security architecture with that of the United States. What do you think Nigeria is missing?
The United States understood that ISPS alone was not enough. When ISPS was adopted, the U.S. also revised its own Maritime Transportation Security Act to accommodate and strengthen the ISPS requirements.
Why?
Because ISPS primarily deals with ports that receive foreign vessels. But the U.S. recognised that there are other access points outside conventional ISPS port facilities. You can have one terminal complying with ISPS while another facility nearby is not operating under the same regime. So the U.S. developed a broader security system covering its entire coastline. You cannot approach a U.S. port unaccounted for. That is the difference.
What specific weaknesses do you see in Nigeria’s port access control?
Our access control system is not sufficiently centralised and robust. For example, you can enter a port and move around under different identification systems. There are different agencies operating there. But the question is: does the overall system account for everybody who enters and leaves the port? In the U.S., there is a centralised identification system. If you don’t have the appropriate identification, you cannot simply access the port environment. Anybody conducting an investigation, inspection or other official activity is captured in the system. As you move through the facility, the system knows where you are. That is what Nigeria needs to develop. We need to account for everybody who enters the port, regardless of whether the particular facility is formally under ISPS.
Finally, what is your message to government and the international shipping community on Nigeria’s war risk insurance challenge?
We need to stop looking for points simply to say we have scored. The easing of the U.S. security measures is definitely positive, but we need to understand its actual impact on shipping companies. We need to engage the international shipping market and get their feedback. More importantly, Nigeria must build a security framework that gives the international community confidence. We need credible data. We need effective port access control. We need proper boat identification and tracking. We need to account for the maritime domain and understand what is happening around our coastline. We cannot simply say piracy is no longer happening and expect the international insurance market to immediately remove war risk. The international market wants evidence, systems and assurance. So the task before us is not just to make declarations. We must build a maritime security framework that works, generate the data to prove that it works, and then take that evidence to the international community. That is the only sustainable way to address the war risk insurance question.
