Director-general of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dakuku Peterside, has called for serious collaboration with stakeholders in the sector to ensure the environment is made conducive enough for continuous growth premised on sustainable development as well as present opportunities for investors both as public and private partnership.
According to Peterside, this applies especially to investments in maritime infrastructure, shipping and ancillary services, offshore services, ship building repairs, as well as marine and bunkering services.
Peterside disclosed this in Calabar, the Cross River State capital, Tuesday, at the second stakeholders interactive session, titled ‘Harnessing Maritime Potentials in an Untapped Environment, Opportunities, Threats and Role of Government.’
He said the threats associated with piracy, sea robbery, and infrastructural challenge, low capacity development and so on, would be surmounted if we (government, business community, local community) play our various roles sincerely.
In the past two years, the agency has greatly impacted the industry in the areas of Maritime Safety and Security through the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) code, he said.
Nigerian ports now have a compliance rate of almost 80 percent, as 114 port facilities out of the total 145 in Nigeria are fully complaint. With the maritime surveillance and domain awareness, the agency can now achieve a complete profile analysis, which includes the flag, registered owner, operator, beneficial owner and movements over a period.
The system, he said, enables the agency to take swift decisions, in real time, on any targeted ship. The agency also recently acquired six fast intervention vessels for Search and Rescue and Enforcement.
He said the Nigerian Maritime Domain, especially the Niger Delta region, is vastly endowed with huge maritime resources that include crude oil, abundant mangrove forests, marshes, natural gas, tar sands and sea grasses, but the country was yet to maximise them for economic development and wealth creation.
In this regard, Nigeria has seven functional seaport as well as 275 identified terminals, jetties, and wharfs in eight coastal states, which include: Tin Can Island Port, Port of Onne, Port of Warri, Koko Port, Port of Calabar, Port of Lagos (Apapa), Bonny Offshore Terminal, and Escravos Oil Terminal.
Over 5,000 vessels call at these Nigerian ports annually (both wet and dry cargo vessels). Out of about 3,033 dry cargo vessels that visited Nigerian ports in 2016, Eastern ports accounted for only 631, which are about 20 percent.
In 2017, out of 3,106 dry cargo vessels that berthed in Nigerian ports, Eastern ports had only 676, about 21 percent.
Furthermore, in Q1 2018, about 749 dry cargo vessels called at the nation’s ports, 292, representing 39 percent of the total berthed at the Eastern ports.
In his goodwill message, Jonathan India, chairman, Governing Board of NIMASA, said the stakeholders meeting was designed to bring a harmonious relationship in the industry so as to play vital role in leveraging in the Federal Government plan of diversification in the non-oil sector of the economy.
