Maritime security in Nigeria’s Niger Delta is governed by overlapping counterterrorism, anti-piracy, anti-oil-theft, fisheries, and human rights regimes. That legal plurality creates a policy problem for small-scale fishing communities whose vessels, landing sites, and livelihood routes occupy the same creeks and coastal waters in which security agencies conduct interdiction operations. This article examines the Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022 (TPPA 2022) through the lenses of marine policy and blue justice. It uses qualitative doctrinal and policy analysis of the TPPA 2022, the Constitution, the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights as domesticated in Nigeria, the Anti-Torture Act 2017, the Suppression of Piracy and Other Maritime Offenses Act 2019, fisheries legislation, case law, FAO small-scale-fisheries standards, and documented maritime-security operations. The analysis makes a critical distinction often blurred in policy debate: section 64 of the TPPA is triggered by urgency linked to an offense under that Act; it is not a general legal basis for every anti-oil-theft or maritime operation. Where the Act is engaged, however, its warrantless search, boarding, seizure, arrest, and force provisions generate acute accountability questions because statutory reporting is internal and delayed, while remedies are dispersed across constitutional, criminal, civil, administrative, and regional mechanisms. The article develops a Power–Limits–Evidence–Responsibility–Remedy framework and integrates it with fisheries-sensitive identification, evidence preservation, independent incident review, and accessible fisher complaint pathways. It also situates security accountability within the cumulative ecological pressures documented in Nigerian coastal fisheries, where pollution and habitat stress can already weaken livelihood resilience. It argues that effective security and small-scale-fisheries protection are not competing objectives: legally differentiated, evidence-preserving, and reviewable enforcement can improve both maritime security legitimacy and livelihood protection.

Keywords: Nigeria; Niger Delta, small-scale fisheries, maritime security, Terrorism (Prevention and Prohibition) Act 2022, state accountability, blue justice, human rights, fisheries governance, oil theft.