By Ibrahim Nasiru
“He who controls the keys to the vault will always dictate the direction of the ship.”
The reception to my recent analysis on rethinking Nigeria’s Port financing strategy highlighted a deep-seated, justifiable skepticism within our maritime community.
While stakeholders overwhelmingly agree that the Nigerian Ports Authority (NPA) must transition toward domestic capital mobilization and revenue retention, one critical question keeps resurfacing: How do we protect a Port Modernization Sinking Fund from the political interference that has paralyzed the Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) for decades?
It is a valid worry.
In Nigeria, the road to infrastructure decay is paved with well-intentioned funds that were ultimately treated as political spoils. If a Port modernization fund is structured simply as a government bank account controlled by changing political appointees, it will fail.
This risk is particularly acute given that the NPA is now a high-stakes fiscal engine, having formally projected a staggering ₦1.489 trillion revenue target for the 2026 fiscal year during its recent budget defense before the National Assembly.
To succeed, we must move away from government custody and engineer “political-proof” maritime structures where true insulation does not come from isolating an asset from the state entirely, but from wrapping it in legal, financial, and institutional guardrails that make political meddling legally impossible and financially punishable.
The first step to safeguarding maritime revenues is removing them from the direct custody of political agencies. A Port Modernization Sinking Fund must never sit on the balance sheet of the NPA, nor within the Treasury Single Account (TSA) where it can be swept to fund unrelated national deficits. Instead, a portion of the NPA’s revenue stream must be legally diverted into an independent, bankruptcy-remote Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) incorporated under the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC).
Once the funds hit this SPV, they are legally separate from the government, meaning a sitting minister or managing director cannot simply sign a memo to withdraw cash to fund a political project without violating corporate governance laws and triggering immediate litigation from asset trustees.
Furthermore, the historic failure of the CVFF lies in bureaucratic custody where politicians and regulators hold the keys to the vault. For a Port sinking fund to work, custody must be handed over to a consortium of independent, private sector institutional trustees and asset managers who operate under strict fiduciary duties.
Their sole mandate is to protect the fund and ensure capital is deployed exclusively for the specific infrastructure projects outlined in the fund’s charter—such as quay wall reconstruction or digital single window infrastructure—leaving them legally bound to refuse any political demands for diversion under the full weight of investment laws and the Investment and Securities Act.
The most effective way to keep politicians honest is to introduce aggressive counter parties who will sue if rules are broken, which is achieved by using the retained Port revenues inside the SPV as equity to issue local currency maritime infrastructure bonds on the financial market dealers quotation (FMDQ) or Nigerian Exchange (NGX) to attract institutional investors like pension fund administrators (PFAs).
When Nigeria’s pension funds invest trillions of Naira into our Ports, the fund ceases to be an opaque government kitty and becomes a publicly traded, highly regulated instrument where the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and powerful institutional investors will demand quarterly audits, strict disclosures, and timely debt servicing, ensuring no administration risks defaulting on local bonds held by millions of working Nigerians just to satisfy a short term political interest.
To cement these structures, the National Assembly must provide legislative teeth through targeted amendments to the Fiscal Responsibility Act and the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) Act, including an “Irrevocable Standing Payment Order” (ISPO) or an automated revenue split mechanism.
The moment Port tariffs are paid by shipping lines via the digital National Single Window, the technology must automatically split the funds, sending 70% to the Federation Account and 30% directly to the private led infrastructure SPV, effectively hardcoding this split into the Port’s digital architecture to eliminate human discretion and political approvals from the collection loop entirely.
Ultimately, we cannot allow the mismanagement of the past to paralyze our economic imagination for the future. The CVFF failed because it was designed as an insular, government controlled honeypot, but a Port Modernization Fund built on private trusteeship, SPV structures, and capital market accountability changes the game entirely.
If Nigeria is to successfully modernize the century old Apapa Port and fix the decaying berths at Tin Can Island, we must build financial structures that outlast political administrations, treating financial engineering with the same urgency as civil engineering to ensure that our maritime wealth is locked securely in service of the nation’s trade, far out of the reach of political interference.
Chief Ibrahim Nasiru
A Public Affairs Analyst writes from
Abuja
