NPERA has the potential to bring sanity to the maritime sector
For more than four decades, Nigeria’s ports have carried the weight of a contradiction. Although they serve as the gateways through which the bulk of the nation’s trade passes, they have been bastions of inefficiency, arbitrary charges, and unchecked exploitation. This has left shippers, importers, exporters, freight forwarders, and manufacturers crying over a suffocating system where foreign shipping lines and terminal operators raise freight rates, impose surcharges, and delay cargo release most often without any consequences. The Nigerian Shippers Council (NSC), which until recently was Nigeria’s primary regulatory agency, also suffered from inadequacies stemming from legal limitations. The limitations gave rise to the deafening call for a new legal framework that would change the narrative and reposition the NSC for better economic gains for the country.
In response, President Goodluck Jonathan, through an Executive Order in 2014, designated NSC as the Port Economic Regulator. The EO positioned the Council to address high tariffs, monopolistic practices, and inefficiencies. But there was a serious pushback from both the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) and terminal operators. The result was extensive court battles that went as far as the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the task facing the sector was not one a mere executive order could fix. It needed legislation.
That legislation, which created the Nigeria Port Economic Regulatory Agency (NPERA), was recently assented to by President Bola Tinubu. The NPREA Act, 2026 repealed the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC) Act of 2004 and converted the NSC into NPERA. The action gave Nigeria a permanent statutory economic regulator for its ports. It also created a new operational framework, which was something the industry has been operating without since 2014.
The core structural change of the NPERA Act ensures that the NPA retains its landlord functions and marine operations, while NPERA takes over tariffs, licensing, service standards, competition, commercial dispute resolution and trade facilitation. In sporting terminology, while NPA owns the stadium, NPERA comes in as the referee. The new framework represents the culmination of a decade-long struggle to give Nigeria’s port economy a regulator with real teeth. Nigeria has one of the highest shipping charges in the world imposed by a handful of terminal operators which makes our ports most unaffordable and unattractive. This new legislation is set to reverse this. The birth of NPERA comes with the potential to bring stability, inclusiveness, and sanity to an industry that has for too long operated below its capacity.
Predictability is the currency of trade. Investors, shipping lines, and logistics companies do not merely want low costs; they also want to know, with reasonable confidence, what those costs will be next quarter and next year. A statutory regulator with the power to enforce tariff discipline gives the industry a foundation on which long-term planning, rather than reactive crisis management, can finally take place. Outside stability, NPERA carries the potential to foster genuine inclusiveness across a sector that has often privileged the powerful over the majority. Small and medium-sized freight forwarders, independent clearing agents, and local logistics operators have historically had little leverage against dominant shipping lines and terminal operators.
A regulator empowered to guard against monopoly and dominant market abuse, to encourage competition, and to mediate disputes among stakeholders shifts the balance of power toward fairness. The maritime sector’s chronic disputes over container deposits, demurrage, storage charges, and cargo clearance delays have not only cost businesses money but have eroded trust between service providers and service users. A well-resourced NPERA, backed by clear Standard Operating Procedures for cargo clearance, truck movement, and port decongestion, offers the chance to replace this culture of dispute and distrust with order, transparency, and accountability. When the rules of engagement are clear and consistently enforced, the incentive to cut corners reduces and service quality increases.
The NPERA Act offers something the sector has lacked for far too long: a regulator with the legal authority to enforce fairness, the mandate to pursue efficiency, and the vision to position Nigeria as a genuine maritime hub. This is why every stakeholder, including government agencies, shipping lines, terminal operators, and logistics professionals alike, must ensure that this new dawn is not squandered.
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