By Steve Agbota
A recent report by the Sea Empowerment and Research Centre (SEREC) has revealed that Nigeria is estimated to be losing $8 billion in revenue yearly due to under-declaration, misclassification and poor documentation of exports, particularly in the solid minerals. The report, which was signed by the Head of Research, SEREC, Dr Eugene Nweke, highlighted that despite abundant deposits of iron ore, gypsum, other solid minerals and crude oil reserves, the country continues to import refined petroleum products and finished goods at high cost, while the steel industry struggles.
However, he said that Nigeria is estimated to lose between $5 to $8 billion annually to trade misinvoicing and under-valuation, which is a huge economic loss to the nation’s maritime sector.
According to him, this has created a cycle in which raw materials are exported at low value, while finished goods are imported at high cost, leading to an estimated $15 billion to $20 billion yearly opportunity losses due to a lack of value addition.
He said that these practices also result in weakened foreign exchange inflows, distort national trade data and deprive the government of critical revenue, noting that the situation is exacerbated by weak institutional oversight in Nigeria’s engagements with foreign partners and extractive vulnerabilities, including industrial economies such as China. He pointed out opaque resource-backed financing structures, weak monitoring of export volumes and valuation, domestic institutional fragility and limited enforcement of global best practices as critical vulnerabilities. He described Nigeria’s ports as exit corridors for raw resource extraction and entry gateways for refined imports, a dual role that reinforces trade imbalances, industrial stagnation and rising cost of living.
“Frequent policy shifts and overlapping regulatory mandates have created systemic loopholes, encouraged rent-seeking behaviour and enabled insider exploitation. This environment of uncertainty has evolved into a tool for exploitation rather than governance,” he said.
Nweke further identified multiple institutional and structural failures, including fragmented digital systems across port, Customs, and shipping operations, the absence of real-time cargo visibility and persistent reliance on manual processes.
He also flagged weak indigenous maritime capacity, a limited national shipping fleet, underdeveloped shipbuilding infrastructure, low retention of maritime economic value, as well as regulatory weakness and capture, including selective enforcement, institutional vulnerabilities to vested interests and weak accountability frameworks.
“The research centre underscored the overwhelming dependence on foreign shipping interests, which handle over 90 per cent of Nigeria’s seaborne cargo, resulting in yearly freight payments of between $7 billion and $9 billion, which are largely repatriated abroad,” he said.
However, he highlighted the cumulative impact on the nation, which manifests in lost employment opportunities across industries, persistent infrastructure deficits and widening poverty and inequality.
To reverse the trend, he called on the federal ministries, maritime regulatory agencies, port authorities and industry stakeholders to urgently initiate coordinated reforms that will restore transparency, accountability and value retention within Nigeria’s maritime domain.
He warned that Nigeria’s ports will remain pipelines of national loss rather than platforms for national prosperity, calling for strategic alignment, institutional discipline and policy coherence to transform the maritime sector into a driver of industrialisation, an employment generator and a pillar of economic sovereignty.
He also recommended strategic reform, including the implementation of end-to-end traceability in integrated cargo tracking systems, enforcement of real-time export valuation and full digitisation and centralisation of trade documentation.
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