NCDMB to implement policy eliminating maritime intermediaries

By Precious Mark

The Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) has announced plans to implement a major policy aimed at eliminating exploitative intermediaries within the maritime supply chain to grant direct market access to competent indigenous operators.

The Acting Director of Planning, Research & Statistics at the NCDMB, Silas Omomehin Ajimijaye, made the disclosure at the ongoing 25th annual Nigeria Oil and Gas (NOG) Energy Week 2026 in Abuja.

Speaking on Thursday during a panel session, Ajimijaye revealed that the board has already drafted the guidelines and will host a comprehensive stakeholders’ engagement meeting to review the document before its official rollout.

The regulatory breakthrough comes as maritime stakeholders and energy executives at the conference warned that mere ownership of vessels will not unlock Nigeria’s multi-billion dollar blue economy unless the country aggressively shifts its focus toward building world-class human competency and achieving total operational sovereignty.

The panel, moderated by the Managing Director of Loyz Marine Services Limited, Bassey Adie, featured heads of top maritime institutions who insisted there is no room for localized technical benchmarks in modern shipping.

Speaking, the Managing Director and CEO of NLNG Shipping & Marine Services Limited (NSML), Abdul-Kadir K. Ahmed, noted that domestic operators must realize that shipping is strictly governed by global rules.

Ahmed stated that NSML does not directly own maritime assets but has achieved elite operational status globally by committing to a deliberate process of human capacity development, adding that the standards are global and require the right systems, processes, and strong people.

Corroborating this stance, the Managing Director of NBC Maritime Limited, Capt. Nicolas Bernard, stated that the industry’s ultimate goal must transcend asset acquisition and land firmly on operational sovereignty.

Bernard, whose firm leverages 45 years of technical ship management experience from its sister group, ABC Maritime AG, explained that shipowning is a grueling, full-time asset-management job.

He urged stakeholders to build a zero-error technical future where a vessel managed in Nigeria carries the exact same international trust as one managed in Switzerland.

The financial realities of scaling local operations were brought to the forefront by the Head of Business Development at XPO Marine Ltd, Temidayo E. Dahunsi, who highlighted his firm’s growth from a single-asset commercial representative to an operator with two active vessels and a third on the way.

Dahunsi issued an appeal regarding maritime financing, revealing that a single standard maritime asset costs an average of $10 million.

Under current local banking frameworks, Nigerian financial institutions are only able to cover about 30% of the asset cost, forcing indigenous operators to source the remaining 70% from international lenders.

Dahunsi called for sweeping policy interventions to de-risk maritime lending, noting that operational excellence and local capacity cannot scale if domestic operators remain financially choked from expanding their fleets.