For those who may be curious as to this new ministry and wonder if it is just a fancy name, lets give you some of research information:
“The blue economy, or the ocean economy, is a term used to describe the economic activities associated with the oceans and seas.” The WB defines it as the “sustainable use of ocean resources to benefit economies, livelihoods and ocean ecosystem health”.
The areas it covers include maritime shipping, fishing and aquaculture, coastal tourism, renewable energy, water desalination, undersea cabling, seabed extractive industries and deep sea mining, marine genetic resources, and biotechnology.
This new one may take a while to come to its own, but it is a good thing that it is being set up distinctly.
Nigeria has not leveraged on its oceans for revenue for ages past shipping activities. It has been a latent sector, largely unregulated for the wide areas that blue economy covers and it has been left to Agencies like NIMASA, NPA and the Shippers Council to develop. A Ministry may turn out to be good for coordination and enlargement of the blue economy.