In a three- day joint fisheries operation organized by the Nigerian Navy and the personnel of the Federal Department of Fisheries and Aquaculture (FDFA) in August 2026, 33 people were arrested as part of an initiative code- named Exercise Coastal Grip II and Operation Abo Eja. Those arrested included 28 Nigerians, 2 Ghanaians and 3 Chinese nationals.

It is widely known that Chinese fishing captains have, for decades, committed illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in the Gulf of Guinea, routinely hiring African workers to help them achieve their aims.

The exercise, which involved naval ships, helicopters, Special Boat Service personnel, and Maritime Surveillance Assets, was coordinated through the Western Naval Command Mission Control Center. The fisheries officials provided technical guidance.

It is also worth noting that the exercise, part of a wider Regional Simultaneous Fisheries Patrol, was conducted in Ghana under the coordination of the Fisheries Committee for the West Central Gulf of Guinea and its Regional Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Center.

During the operation, three fishing trawlers were intercepted. According to the Director of Fisheries Resources, Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy, Usman Garba, among the infractions discovered were that one of the vessels was operating with a 36mm mesh size, contrary to laid-down standards for its category, alongside discrepancies in its Automatic Identification System (AIS). Two other vessels were found fishing within five nautical miles of the shoreline with their AIS switched off.

The Nigerian Industry

Nigeria produces around 1.2 million metric tonnes of fish annually but faces a heavy demand gap of about 2.5 million metric tonnes that forces the country to rely on significant imports.

The sector is structured into Artisanal fishing, which generates over 80 percent of domestic production, driven by small -scale fishers in coastal areas, the Niger Delta creeks, lagoons, and inland rivers. Aquaculture accounts for about 360,000 metric tonnes per year, making Nigeria the largest aquaculture producer in sub- Saharan Africa. The industrial fishery operates at a very low capacity, meeting only about 10 percent of its potential demand due to an ageing fleet, high operating costs, and policy limits.

There are key challenges. First is supply deficit. Total national demand stands between 3.36 to 3.6 million metric tonnes, leaving a wide shortfall. Next is import reliance. Nigeria spends about 0.6 billion USD to 1 billion USD annually on fish imports to bridge the protein gap. Recent initiatives by the Federal Ministry of Marine and Blue Economy and stakeholders like WorldFish Nigeria, have launched committees and training programmes to modernise feed technology, boost local yields, and cut down foreign import dependence.

According to a Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations 2024 report, fish remains an essential part of the Nigerian household diet. But citizens consume below the annual global average of 21kg. The report also revealed that the sector contributed only 0.83 percent of national GDP in 2020 and 3.26 percent of agricultural GDP.

Regional Efforts to Govern our Waters.

Nigeria and other West African nations are jointly working hard to halt the IUU fishing that is depleting yields on the coasts of the Gulf of Guinea.

On the 1st of June, 2026, the Combined Maritime Task Force(CMTF) was established to address IUU fishing and other regional sea crimes. Ghana, The Gambia, Côte d’Ivoire, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Nigeria met to sign the pact that would address the issues, making. The CMTF, the first joint African-led maritime security effort that would include a rapid response force.

The task force, with its headquarters in Lagos, Nigeria, will conduct intelligence, interdiction, patrols, surveillance, search and rescue missions, and other security operations. It will work closely with the West African Regional Maritime Security Center, and the Central African Regional Maritime Center.

According to information from the Naval Command, the partnership between the Navy and the FDFA will continue. Enforcement powers have been strengthened by the Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Related Offences (SPOMO) Act, under which the Navy had previously prosecuted offenders, including oil thieves.

Poachers want to exploit overlapping maritime boundaries among the Gulf of Guinea states that include Equatorial Guinea, Togo, Cameroon, Sao Tome and Principe, Ghana and Cote D’Ivoire. In response the this, the Navy noted, Nigeria is strengthening regional cooperation.

Shortly after the Operation Abo Eja, Adeleke Adegoke, FDFA deputy director told Radio Nigeria, “The operation has demonstrated the importance of maintaining a strong presence at sea, as regular and credible surveillance creates deterrent, encourages compliance amongst legitimate operators and provides the authorities with valuable information on the activities taking place on the Nigerian maritime jurisdiction.”

Nigerian Navy Rear Admiral Abubakar Mustapha told the Channel’s Television reporters after the recent arrests that IUU fishing has caused an enormous reduction in the country’s fish production that it now has to rely on imports. “So, the partnership between the Nigerian Navy and the FDFA is a step in the right direction….In fact, the days of illegal fishers and poachers are numbered because the intersection of security, which the Navy brings, and regulation , which the FDFA brings to the table, would translate to the denial of these criminal activities, and which will also translate to more revenue and more food security,” he said.

There have been previous arrests and punitive measures. In a March 2014 operation in Onne, Rivers State, Nigeria, the Nigerian Navy arrested four foreign vessels and detained 22 Chinese nationals for unauthorized fishing. The suspects lacked valid immigration papers, international passports, and proper fishing permits. Their impounded trawlers had several tonnes of illegally caught fish on board.

In May 2014, the Nigerian Navy reported holding eight Chinese ships in custody as part of a wider crackdown on unauthorised commercial fishing and maritime infractions within Nigeria’s territorial waters.

While foreign captains and crew are routinely handed over to the Nigerian Immigration Service or maritime regulators for prosecution, specific administrative fines vary. There have been cases of courts levying heavy punitive options such as multi- million Naira fines or alternative multi-year jail sentences for corporate and environmental violations similar to those seen in parallel sectors like illegal mining.

Impacts of the Chinese Fishing Violations on the African Region. How involved is Beijing?

The documented scale of Chinese involvement in IUU fishing in Nigeria reflects a significant economic and ecological threat. China operates the world’s largest distant-water fishing fleet that gives them with the leverage to operate within Nigeria’s territorial waters and Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

Different security, oceanographic and investigative reports enumerate the scope, methods and impact of these activities. First is the Financial and Economic scale. According to tracking metrics from the Nigerian Navy and Maritime Agencies, Nigeria loses an estimated 70 million USD annually to IUU fishing, with Chinese vessels identified as the main actors. Regarding broader Regional Impact, on a macroeconomic level, West Africa remains the global epicenter for IUU fishing, with the wider region losing between 2.9 and 10 billion USD annually to illegal foreign trawlers.

There is the issue of import dependency. Due to the depletion of domestic fish stocks by industrial vessels, Nigeria has been pushed into importing more than 70 percent of its fishery needs to meet with national demand.

NextSecond is Physical and Operational Presence. THISDAYLIVE reported that surveys by international groups like the West Africa Task Force have shown that over 450 industrial vessels, mostly from China, actively fish off the coast of West Africa.

There is also encroachment into prohibited zones. Chinese vessels routinely move between 2 to 4 nautical miles from the Nigerian shoreline. This is a direct violation of Nigeria’s Non trawling Zone, which is legally reserved exclusively for local artisanal fishermen.

Thirdly, there are documented methods of Chinese IUU in Nigeria. Independent investigations from organisations like Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF) and the Atlantic Council mention many structural tactics used by Chinese operators to evade local laws.

There is the ” flagging in” phenomenon. Chinese corporations often circumvent domestic regulations by creating local joint- venture fronts or companies that allow them to illegally register foreign – owned vessels under the Nigerian flag, thereby gaining legitimate fishing licenses while hiding their real Chinese owners.

Again, there is the illegal Transshipment commonly termed ‘saiko.’ Industrial trawlers harvest large quantities of pelagic fish, bypass formal ports to escape tax or quota regulations and transfer their catch onto secondary cargo vessels on the high seas. In a community like Oyorokoto in the Niger Delta, Chinese operators have been documented catching staple fish and illegally selling them to the local fishers.

Lastly, there are trawling methods that deplete catch. These rely on bottom trawling, which involves dragging massive, weighted nets across the seabed. This indiscriminately scoops up juvenile fish and destroys fragile marine ecosystems. Some vessels practice double trawling, in which two ships move in parallel, dragging along a net between them, and thereby picking up all in its path.

Recently, the Chinese government refused to sign the Mombasa Declaration, an agreement meant to improve efforts to combat illegal fishing in East Africa.

This prompted Steve Trent, CEO and co -founder of the EJF, to tell the BBC that the Chinese government has taken a disingenuous approach regarding its fishing fleet. “It’s simply not credible for them to carry on in this way. China to date still is not doing nearly enough to control its fleet. In fact, I would say they’re enabling it, through subsidies, through a lack of oversight and control.”

In 2019, Senegal and Liberia denied Chinese industrialised trawlers permission into their waters. In 2020, six Chinese trawlers were detected entering South Africa’s EEZ after being ordered out of Namibian waters. The trawlers were detained and their operators fined. And in 2021, many Chinese trawlers were arrested after the Minister of Fisheries in Gabon declared a crackdown on illegal fishing.

China and Other Businesses in Africa

These anomalies in China’s international relations bring us to another issue that although it involves the Chinese, has no direct connection with IUU fishing. It is the broader presence of Chinese businesses and nationals in other sectors of Nigeria’s economy. Do they play by the rules?

The ASPMDA market located in the sprawling grounds of the Lagos International Trade Fair Complex is a popular one. In mid-September 2026, protesters – many of whom werewho were mostly traders, took up placards that said the Chinese must leave. The protest was contained within hours after local government officials, police and market leaders intervened.

Tension had been rising for years, not only in Lagos, but across much of the developing world, as Chinese firms move from supplying foreign markets to selling directly inside them.

The traders who deal largely in imported goods usually sourced from China, complain that the Chinese are no longer satisfied with being wholesalers, but were also taking over the retail outlets from them. They feared that if left unchecked, the involvement of the Chinese merchants in the retail business of which they (the Chinese) are also the manufacturers and suppliers, could threaten the survival of local businesses, thereby displacing Nigerian traders from the market.

A retailer commented that Chinese manufacturers were bypassing traditional supply chains by opening direct retail outlets within local markets. As they sell directly to customers, Chinese merchants cut out the middlemen. “The entire trading model is based on the middleman. Once the wholesaler becomes the middleman, the retailer is edged out,” he added.

A trade analyst said, ” Left on their own, I do not see these local traders surviving because the Chinese wholesalers have direct access to low interest credit from home and can afford to import more, sell for less, and capture the market easily.” He wanted the local traders who felt disenfranchised to seek partnerships and move into manufacturing.

A protester said, ” They came and built warehouses, rented shops, and are now selling as we do as retailers. If we send a waybill, they copy the customer’s number. We no longer make sales. If you import goods, they slash their prices lower than ours and sell goods to customers. Is this how we would continue?”

From our findings, there are regulations governing Chinese and other foreign businesses in Nigeria. These are based on general foreign investment laws, mandatory corporate registration, and sector-specific compliance rules. The question is whether these are being adhered to.

These businesses must be registered with the Corporate Affairs Commission under the Companies and Allied Matters Act (CAMA) before starting operations, unless they qualify for a rare statutory exemption. Key regulatory requirements are corporate incorporation in which foreigners can own up to 100 percent equity in a Nigerian company and should obtain a Tax Identification Number (TIN), while complying with a 30 percent corporate tax rate alongside a 7.5 percent Value – Added Tax (VAT).

There are sector restrictions listed in the Nigerian Investment Promotion Commission ‘Negative List’ in which foreign ownership is restricted or prohibited. These include arms, ammunition, and narcotics, or specific small -scale sectors reserved for local Nigerians. Examples are cottage industries and basic retail/agricultural activities. Others are Sector – Specific Rules in which companies operating in regulated industries like oil and gas, telecom, or mining must acquire additional operational licenses and adhere to local content laws.

There is also the Retail and Distribution Trade, where regulatory bodies like the Center for the Promotion of Private Enterprise (CPPE) have pushed for stricter enforcement and clearer boundaries to prevent foreign wholesalers and manufacturers from moving downstream into basic retail markets. This puts pressure on local small and medium enterprises.

Finally, there is the issue of fair competition, which demands that legally registered foreign traders are subject to the Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (FCCPC) guidelines, which prohibit anti- competitive practices or abuse of dominant market positions.

Meanwhile, market leaders in ASPMDA have asked their protesting members to remain calm as they work towards an amicable resolution of issues raised. But representatives of the government accuse protesters of breaching the peace and that they should be arrested and prosecuted. A Special Assistant to the Lagos State Governor said the protesters had no legitimate reason to embark on the protest. Many think otherwise.

Chinese businesses have long been an important source of goods for Nigerian traders. But as Chinese manufacturers and retailers increasingly sell directly to Nigerian consumers, local traders say they are being pushed out of a market they once depended on.

Considering the enormous benefits poorer global economies have gained through business with China, it will be necessary for all parties to seek out how best to appropriately cooperate with each other for the sake of global prosperity.