By Oluyinka Onigbinde
Investigation by Shipping Position Daily has revealed that no fewer than 56 passengers have been caught up in sea robbery, boat hijacking and waterways kidnapping incidents across Nigeria’s coastal and riverine routes between January and August 2026, with the Nigerian Navy and other security agencies recording a series of interventions to rescue victims.
The investigation, which examined reported incidents involving passenger boats and other commercial water craft, found that at least five distinct incidents occurred within the period, particularly along waterways linking Cross River and Akwa Ibom states. The incidents ranged from attempted sea robberies and boat hijacking to outright abduction of passengers, with security agencies in several cases responding to distress calls and launching rescue operations.
However, the incidents uncovered by Shipping Position Daily should not be confused with piracy attacks on Nigeria’s maritime domain.
There has been no reported piracy attack in Nigerian waters in the period under review and beyond, attributable the country’s sustained record of zero piracy for more than three years. NIMASA has consistently credited the collaboration between its Deep Blue Project and the Nigerian Navy, alongside other security agencies, with strengthening surveillance, response and interdiction capabilities and helping to keep Nigeria’s territorial waters and wider maritime domain free of piracy.
Rather, the cases documented in this investigation largely involve sea robbery, passenger-boat hijacking, attempted kidnapping and riverine criminality, incidents which are often perpetrated against small passenger boats operating along coastal and inter-community routes.
Checks by our correspondent revealed that one of the most significant incidents occurred on March 8, when the Nigerian Navy foiled a suspected sea robbery and kidnapping attempt along the strategic Ibaka-Calabar Channel.
According to reports, suspected sea robbers intercepted a fibre passenger boat conveying civilians from Ibaka in Akwa Ibom State towards Bakassi in Cameroon and took control of the vessel. The attackers were reportedly holding the passengers hostage with the intention of moving them into nearby creeks when Nigerian Navy personnel intervened.
The operation resulted in the rescue of all 16 passengers, who were confirmed safe and unharmed. The incident demonstrated the growing importance of rapid naval response along the coastal routes, particularly in areas where passenger boats remain a major means of transportation between communities.
Another major incident was recorded in April when 15 passengers travelling on a boat from Calabar to Oron were abducted by gunmen along the waterway. The Cross River State Police Command confirmed the reported abduction and said security agencies were working to rescue the victims and apprehend the perpetrators. The incident subsequently generated conflicting accounts over the exact location and circumstances surrounding the abduction, with the Cross River State Government disputing some aspects of the initial reports. Shipping Position Daily has retained the incident in its tally because the police formally confirmed the reported abduction, while recognising the conflicting accounts surrounding the case.
The pattern continued into July when the Navy rescued three passengers from a suspected sea robbery attack around the Mbendoro waters in Akwa Ibom State. The three passengers were travelling from Cameroon to Oron when their boat, which was carrying tomatoes, came under attack. A distress alert received by the Navy prompted personnel of the Forward Operating Base, Ibaka, to move into the area, resulting in the rescue of the three passengers. The victims were taken to the naval base and were reportedly unharmed.
The most recent major incident occurred on August 11 when armed sea robbers hijacked a wooden passenger boat travelling from Henshaw Town Beach in Calabar to Utan Uyata, Ibaka.
The attackers intercepted the boat shortly after it passed Enwang Community and abducted the passengers. The Nigerian Navy, working with Operation Delta Safe Sector 4 and the Marine Police, subsequently launched a rescue operation. 22 passengers were eventually rescued or accounted for. According to the security agencies, 11 victims were abandoned by the attackers at Asak-Ikang Creek, while another 11 passengers escaped during the attack and were subsequently located and accounted for. The hijacked boat was also recovered.
The August incident brings the number of passengers directly affected in the clearly identified cases examined by Shipping Position Daily to at least 56, comprising 16 passengers in the March incident, 15 in the April case, three in the July attack and 22 in the August hijacking.
The investigation also identified another reported January waterway kidnapping involving passengers. However, because the available reports contain insufficient primary-source confirmation on the precise number of victims, Shipping Position Daily has not added that figure to the 56-person minimum. This approach, according to the newspaper, is intended to avoid inflating the statistics and to ensure that only cases with sufficient evidence are included in the tally.
The findings indicate that the problem is particularly pronounced around the Calabar-Oron-Ibaka axis, where passenger boats serve as a major means of transportation between communities in Cross River, Akwa Ibom and neighbouring Cameroon. Unlike conventional piracy statistics, which generally focus on attacks against sea-going commercial vessels, the incidents uncovered by our correspondent involve only passengers travelling on small boats, traders and other civilians using Nigeria’s riverine and coastal transportation network. The distinction is important because an incident involving the robbery or hijacking of a passenger boat may not appear in international piracy statistics, even though passengers are held hostage, robbed or abducted.
But while piracy against commercial vessels has remained suppressed, the passenger-boat incidents uncovered by Shipping Position Daily suggest that criminality on some riverine and coastal transportation routes remains a separate security challenge requiring sustained attention.
Maritime security expert and President of the Maritime Security Providers Association of Nigeria, MASPAN, Emmanuel Maiguwa in a chat with our correspondent said the persistence of attacks on passenger boats points to gaps in Nigeria’s maritime security architecture, particularly in the monitoring and regulation of boats operating on coastal and inland waterways.
Maiguwa said Nigeria needed to pay greater attention to smaller vessels and waterways that are often outside the focus of conventional maritime security operations. According to him, the absence of an effective system for identifying, numbering, tracking and monitoring boats operating on Nigerian waters creates an environment that can be exploited by criminals. He noted that internationally, different classes of vessels are subjected to specific regulatory and tracking requirements depending on whether they operate at sea or on inland waterways, but questioned whether Nigeria had an equally effective system.
“If you have a boat, you can go and get lost in Nigeria. Nobody cares,” Maiguwa said, stressing the need for a system capable of accounting for vessels operating across the country’s waterways.
He said the problem went beyond licensing, arguing that authorities needed to know the identity and movement of boats, while also ensuring that vessels were properly designed, approved and registered for the waters in which they operate.
Maiguwa also warned that inadequate boat identification could make investigations and prosecution more difficult, whenever a vessel was used to commit a crime.
The expert further stressed that maritime criminality could not be effectively addressed without knowing who and what was moving within the maritime domain.
“Before anybody will be able to get to a ship, to either carry the crew or sail the ship away and take cargo, he must have access to the maritime domain. These guys (criminals) do not come from the bottom of the sea,” he said.
Maiguwa said Nigeria therefore needed to develop stronger maritime-domain awareness, better vessel identification and more reliable data on incidents occurring across its coastal and riverine waterways. He also called for a more robust maritime data system, noting that several incidents may go unreported or remain outside official statistics, making it difficult to obtain a complete picture of maritime criminality.
The comments come against the backdrop of the investigation’s finding that there is no readily accessible consolidated national database showing the total number of passenger boats attacked, people kidnapped, sea-robbery attempts foiled, victims rescued and casualties recorded across the country’s coastal and riverine waterways.
