Charting the Course for Nigeria’s Blue Economy: Admiral Udofia Proffers 5-Pillared Blueprint at MARCON 2026
The International Maritime Institute of Nigeria (IMION) has taken a decisive stand on national food security, proposing a transformative policy roadmap to address the severe supply-demand gap in Nigeria’s fisheries sector.
Delivering his remarks on Wednesday, September 30, 2026, at the National Conference on Sustainable Fishing organized by the Maritime Correspondents’ Organisation of Nigeria (MARCON) at the Rockview Hotel, Apapa, Lagos, the Director-General, Rear Admiral Thaddeus Christopher Udofia (Rtd), Ph.D., brought institutional research to the forefront of national discourse.
Speaking on the theme “Sustainable Fishing in Nigeria: Pathways to Growth, Food Security, and Coastal Livelihoods,” Admiral Udofia anchored his remarks on an evocative coastal proverb: “The ocean never dries, but the net can still come up empty.”
Drawing from authoritative figures compiled by the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN COMTRADE), the Director-General exposed an unsustainable fiscal trend. Nigeria’s seafood import bill has experienced an aggressive 19.54% compound annual growth rate—climbing from $606 million in 2023 to $688.5 million in 2024, and peaking at a staggering $866 million in 2025.
Admiral Udofia defined this massive drain on foreign exchange as a profound national paradox. Despite possessing a highly productive 853-kilometre Atlantic coastline, expansive networking’s of inland waterways, and the resource-rich Niger Delta Basin, the country remains highly dependent on foreign seafood supplies.
He emphasized that the structural challenge is no longer the sheer availability of marine life, but the strategic capacity to convert this natural wealth into sustainable jobs and food sufficiency.
“Our inability to translate the abundant fisheries resource endowment into seafood sufficiency, and by extension, food security, is the paradox which this conference seeks to unravel,” the Director-General remarked.
The Director-General identified a destructive “existential triad” actively undermining the maritime sector: aggressive overfishing, accelerating climate change, and the plague of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) fishing.
He raised a strict institutional alarm over foreign industrial trawlers operating illegally as “predatory ghosts” within the nation’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). By deploying uncontrolled bottom trawling, these vessels systematically flatten vital benthic habitats and strip local artisanal fishermen of their daily sustenance.
“When a local fisherman in Ondo or Delta State for instances ventures out to sea and returns with an empty canoe, that is not a simple bad day at work—that is a direct, violent hit to Nigeria’s national food security. It forces yet another vulnerable household beneath the poverty line,” Admiral Udofia warned.
To suppress these economic saboteurs, the DG called for immediate, robust regulatory synergy, urging maritime security agencies—such as the Nigerian Navy—and port authorities to expand their successful anti-piracy models directly into fisheries enforcement.
Advocating for evidence-based governance, the Director-General stressed that sustainable maritime management cannot rely on guesswork. He outlined IMION’s comprehensive Five-Pillared Strategic Blueprint to guide the nation’s transition toward long-term blue economy resilience:
- Robust Regulatory Synergy and Enforcement: Moving decisively from wild-capture dependencies to technologically driven aquaculture. This includes pioneering scalable cage culture systems in coastal lagoons to create predictable, commercial opportunities for youths and women.
- Bridging Science, Policy and Practice: Eliminating severe post-harvest losses by modernizing processing infrastructure and expanding specialized training through maritime academies.
- Deploy Capacity Building and Technological Integration: Deploying advanced Vessel Monitoring Systems (VMS) and satellite surveillance to enforce strict compliance, noting that Nigeria cannot effectively manage resources it does not accurately measure.
- Leveraging Advanced Maritime Technology and Data Intelligence: Institutionalizing localized governance by granting coastal communities a legal, vested ownership stake in protecting their local fishing grounds.
- Community-Based Fisheries Management: Equipping coastal youths with high-value technical skills beyond conventional fishing, including marine entrepreneurship, eco-tourism, and boat building.
In his closing charge, Admiral Udofia called upon public and private sector leaders to transition immediately from policy declarations to disciplined execution. He challenged academic bodies to supply actionable research, financial institutions to structure accessible credit for cooperative societies, and regulators to fiercely enforce existing laws.
“Let us protect our waters and fisheries resources therein, so they may protect our future,” the DG concluded.
As a premier think-tank, IMION remains entirely committed to deploying its research, capacity-building, and governance frameworks to ensure Nigeria’s marine resources support, secure, resilient livelihoods across all coastal communities.