The Supreme Court has ruled that the Federal Government has total control of all waterways in the country, including the right to levy and license operators in the sector.
The apex court in its ruling declared that states attempting to regulate the sector and impose levies on businesses operating in the nation’s inland waterways were acting wrongly, unlawfully, and illegally.
In an appeal marked SC/CV/17/2018, the court held that States lack the constitutional right to impose levies on businesses operating in the nation’s inland waterways.
The appeal was filed by the National Inland Waterways Authority, NIWA, and the Nigerian Maritime Standard and Safety Agency, NMSSA, the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, as well as the Minister of Transport.
According to the supreme court, the existing legal framework exclusively assigns control over activities within the nation’s inland waterways to the Nigerian Government, executed through its agencies – the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) and the Nigerian Maritime Standard and Safety Agency (NIMASSA) – without any provision for involvement by other tiers of government.
The appeal filed in 2018 was prosecuted for the appellants by a team of lawyers led by Prince Lateef Fagbemi (SAN), now the Attorney General of the Federation, AGF, and Minister of Justice.
The Supreme Court agreed with Fagbemi’s argument that NIWA is the only agency saddled with the responsibility to levy, impose, and charge utilization rates along the declared waters of the Nigerian Inland Waterways Authority.
It stressed that