UNCERTAINTY IN NIGERIA’S MARITIME LEGAL FRAMEWORK: A STATUTORY AND POLICY REVIEW

Abstract

Nigeria is investing heavily in its ports at a moment when the legal framework governing security over ships remains internally inconsistent. This article argues that the ambiguity between the Admiralty Jurisdiction Act 1991 and the Merchant Shipping Act 2007 is not a drafting untidiness of interest only to academics, but a quantifiable commercial risk that raises the cost of maritime credit and deters investment. The article devotes particular attention to the ship mortgage, showing that a mortgagee in Nigeria can identify neither the full set of claims outranking its security nor the residual value of the fund after forced sale, with the result that enforcement risk is priced into lending terms or expressed as refusal to lend. The article adopted a doctrinal and comparative methodology for this work. The article, among others, recommended a unified statutory schedule of liens and priorities, jurisdictional clarification, mandatory arrest timelines, and domestication of both Conventions.