The men who cornered Ita James did not come for his catch. In this bustling town of Ibaka, one of Nigeria’s largest fishing towns, fishers know how sudden and brutal such an encounter could be. Speedboats fitted with twin 200-horsepower engines emerge from the horizon, shots are fired, and fishermen are forced by men armed with automatic rifles to promptly unbolt and hand over their outboard engines. Those who resist are beaten, sometimes killed.

After the attackers vanish, the victims’ boats are left dead on the water, drifting until help arrives. Many fishers return home broken, having borrowed to replace a stolen engine, only to lose it again.

“It is like working for the criminals,” said Mr James, who lost two engines in two years. “It happened more than once; I lost them. Some people have lost [engines] three or more times.”

After he escaped a third attack, this time with a borrowed motor, the owner promptly took the equipment away. The 51-year-old now works as a hired hand on another boat, earning just enough to keep his family. “It has been difficult, very difficult. If you fight them, they kill you. People are killed and thrown in the water.”

During an interview in August, Mr James sat on a wooden bench with three other fishermen at Ibaka’s main harbour, repairing nets at a time when owners of engine-powered boats were at sea.

“They take our engines, phones, money; sometimes your fish and everything,” said Moses Lawrence, another fisher. “And you will be stranded and, [if] God helps you, another boat comes around. It is very common here; there is almost nobody who has not suffered this problem.”

He speaks flatly, his face lean and weathered in the morning sun, as the Atlantic lapped the coastline and dozens of traders walked by.

Officially, Nigeria’s waters are now safer. Maritime authorities say significant progress has been made in addressing piracy, with no recorded attack on vessels in four years. But along the same coastline, small-scale fishers and women traders tell a different story: of engines stolen, people kidnapped, and deaths that are not investigated. Despite upbeat security reports, attacks have shifted from oil tankers and industrial trawlers to the co