Actuall Nigeria is not a big country for ship registration A "Flag Of Convenience" (FOC) ship is a ship where the nationality of the owner is different from the country in which the ship is registered. Countries that offer registration of ships owned by foreign interests are considered to have what is called an "open register". Foreign owned ships dominate the flags of "open register" countries. The modern origin of open registries can be traced back to the 1920s, when the United Fruit Company created the Honduran open registry to ensure the cheap and reliable transport of its bananas. The Panamanian open registry came about soon after that because U.S. flagged passenger ships wanted to serve liquor during Prohibition. The Liberian open register came about during the "Cold War" because the U.S. wanted a fleet of "neutral" ships to haul its cargo, mostly oil. Some times it is even hard to trace down the real owners a FOC ship. Often in the register country the address for the ship owners will only be a Post Office Box. From there you must follow a series of front companies, often in different countries, before you end up finding the real owners of a FOC ship. Many large American shipping lines like the American President Lines are leaving U.S. flags and are becoming FOC ships. In 1998 there were 28 open register countries of FOC ships and 19,270 vessels over 100 gt, which comes to 22.5% of the world's fleet and in that year there was a 8.5% increases in FOC ships. Of the top 35 maritime countries based on real ownership of vessels not one of them is an open register country. For example, the true nationality of ownership of ships from Greece that are part of open register fleets (percentage of open register fleets) are as follows: Liberia 12.4%, Panama 11.1%, Cyprus 72.6%, Bahamas 19.0% and Malta 56.3%. Of the top six fleets of gross tonnage in 1998, five of the are open registers for FOC ships; Panama (6,188 vessels), Liberia (1,697 vessels), Bahamas (1,221 vessels), Cyprus (1,650) and Malta (1,378). The U.S. fleet ranks 11th in gross tonnage. . Mike mmcfadden(a)cmh.edu