By Chinonye Anyatonwu
Friday 10th of March marks Dr. Bashir Jamoh’s three years of appointment as the Director-General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency(NIMASA).
Throughout these eventful years, Nigeria’s maritime industry has witnessed astronomical growth and quantum development which has earned the country international recognition and goodwill.
Nigeria was able to defeat the hydra-headed monster called PIRACY in the Gulf of Guinea, even as the country has recorded zero attacks on ships in the past one year of his administration.
On resumption of office, Dr Jamoh and his team came up with a performance tripod called “Tripple S” that is; Maritime Safety, Maritime Security and Shipping Development.
In this comprehensive profile of the administration of the Kaduna State-born technocrat in NIMASA, our reporter takes a cursory look at the achievements, prospects and projections of the agency to make the industry more robust for efficiency, investments and accelerated growth.
The Mandate
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) was established by an Act of Parliament (The NIMASA Act 2007) with two cardinal objectives, namely;
To Regulate and Promote Maritime Safety, Security, Marine Pollution and Maritime Labour.
To promote the development of Indigenous Commercial Shipping in International and Coastal Shipping Trade
The Agency derives its mandate from four Acts of the National Assembly. These are NIMASA Act, 2007, Cabotage Act, 2003, Merchant Shipping Act, 2007 and SPOMO Act, 2019.
VISION
To be the leading maritime administration in Africa advancing Nigeria’s global maritime goals
MISSION
To achieve and sustain safe, secure shipping, cleaner oceans and enhanced maritime capacity in line with global best practices towards Nigeria’s economic development
OUR CORE VALUES
C – COMMITMENT
A – ACCOUNTABILITY
P – PROFESSIONALISM
I – INTEGRITY
T – TEAMWORK
E – EXCELLENCE
L – LEADERSHIP
D – DISCIPLINE
OUR PERFORMANCE TRIPOD
MARITIME SECURITY S1:
Security of the Maritime Domain is very critical to the day-to-day operation of the sector. Security helps to boost investors’ confidence; hence, the following key accomplishments are under the current dispensation.
Signing into law of the SPOMO Act by Mr. President
The launch of the Deep Blue Project
Significant Reduction in Piracy and Kidnappings
Arrests and Successful Prosecution of Criminals
Leadership of Regional Maritime Collaboration Forum to tackle Insecurity
Nigeria’s Removal from IBM’s Red List
AIM OF THE DEEP BLUE PROJECT
The aim of the project is to establish a sustainable architecture for improved maritime safety and security through increased monitoring and compliance enforcement within Nigeria’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), with a view to effectively tackling the challenges of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea.
THE DEEP BLUE PROJECT ASSETS BREAKDOWN
Classified into 3 (three) with over 254 personnel drawn from Military and paramilitary organizations. These are; Marine, Land and Air Assets.
Land Assets
Armored Vehicles – 17
Facilities – Command, Control, Computer, Communication and Intelligence (C4i) Centre, Training Facilities (Shooting Range, C4i Training Centre etc.). Training; various training for all personnel in the deep blue project on the assets and facilities.
THE INTER-OPERABILITY OF THE DEEP BLUE ASSETS
Effective implementation of the Deep Blue Project contributed to the reduction in piracy cases with only one piracy case as of May 2022, 6 cases in 2021 from 35 cases in 2020 and 2019 respectively
OUR PERFORMANCE TRIPOD
MARITIME SAFETY S2:
The Agency observed that shipping is critical to global trade, yet it is the most vulnerable in terms of safety. This explains the reason the IMO (International Maritime Organization) adopted the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) convention to ensure the safety of those involved.
Consequently, empowered by enabling legislations, NIMASA takes this as a critical aspect of its job to ensure safety of ships and those on board, through proper enforcement of maritime safety conventions.
OUR PERFORMANCE TRIPOD
SHIPPING DEVELOPMENT S3
The critical aspect of shipping development encompasses fleet expansion, shipbuilding and ship repairs. Shipping is responsible for over 90 percent of international transportation of goods that sustain the global supply chain, which is a significant component of the global economy, enhancing imports and exports of goods and services.
NIMASA is poised to advance shipping by ensuring a conducive environment for commercial shipping and encouraging more indigenous participation in the global shipping trade.
NSDP BREAKDOWN AS AT OCTOBER 2022
The Making of Nigeria’s Blue Economy Strategic Document
Vice President His Excellency Yemi Osinbajo will Chair the Expanded Committee on the Blue Economy Strategy Development and its Implementation Task Team.
The Federal Ministry of Transportation under the leadership of the Honourable Minister for Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Amaechi
Federal Ministry of Transportation as the Secretariat
BLUE ECONOMY AND LITTORAL STATES ENGAGEMENT
CABOTAGE VESSEL FINANCING FUND (CVFF) – STATUS OF DELIVERY
Presidential approval was granted for disbursement.
Primary lending institutions appointed.
MARITIME SAFETY
The Federal Executive Council, at the end of the last quarter of 2021, approved the wreck removals from the Badagry axis up to the Tincan Island project has gone very far.
Again, in the first quarter of 2022, the Federal Executive Council approved the removal of the entire wrecks also in the other zones of Nigeria, comprising the Western zone with headquarters in Lagos, Eastern zone headquarters in Port Harcourt, and then the central Zone headquarters in Warri. All these projects have achieved major milestones.
We engaged the Nigerian Navy Naval Dockyard in Lagos to repair our operational vessels, Millennia 1 and Millennium 2. Today both vessels and five others are almost ready
for deployment for enforcement purposes. This will also enhance our search and rescue operation, and port and flag state administration amongst others.
In other to attend to the emergencies that may occur after Search and Rescue operations, the Agency has built two brand new Search and Base clinics of international standard at Azare Crescent, Apapa and Kirikiri. We are hopeful to commission it soon. The hospital is not for NIMASA or Nigeria, but for the original Regional States, NIMASA is in charge of nine countries in terms of Search and Rescue. The hospital is of high international standard, we hope to treat all calibers of patients locally, and internationally, with the state-of-the-art equipment the facility will possess, when completed.
In the area of our Flag and Port State Administration, at the inception of the administration, there was no single vessel for enforcement. Today, we have built seven brand new bulletproof boats and we expect them to have completed the building. They are being built in Spain, and we are hoping that before the end of March, we will receive and commission the vessel.
As soon as the vessels are commissioned, there will be enhanced enforcement performance; and we plan to divide the use of the vessels; not only in Lagos but also in other zones of the Agency. All these will cater for the issue of safety.
MARITIME SECURITY
Before 2019, we do not have law, separate law that tried these offenders and criminals that we arrest those involved in piracy and kidnapping.
Therefore, we are trying to get this formal act Suppression of Piracy and other Maritime Related Offences (SPOMO) Act signed by Mr. President in June 2019. As of today, we have secured convictions under this Act. This has also served as a deterrent to would-be criminals.
To further deter these criminalities on the waterways and make our youths gainfully employed, the Agency engaged the Marine Litter Marshals Usually;
In the area of education, the Agency introduced the Nigerian Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP). The Nigerian NSDP development program is a capacity development programme.
Now in order to ensure that we do not forget our own training institution in Nigeria, we have improved our interface with the Maritime Academy of Nigeria (MAN) Oron. The Agency’s statutory funding of the Maritime Academy of Nigeria in Oron has been on point since 2020.
We have Simulators, among other state-of-the-art facilities, and the funding by NIMASA has been unhindered. This is in addition to other private maritime institutions, the private like Charkins, which are now also coming up with a lot of accreditation of diplomas and other short-term certificates that we are doing it locally, saving foreign exchange that we are having.
In addition to this initiative, the Agency created skill acquisition centres across six geopolitical zones. For the South-West we have Lagos, in the South-East we have Anambra, for South-South we have Bayelsa, in North-East, we have Maiduguri, Borno state; for North-West we have Kaduna State for North Central we have Kwara.
So all these skill acquisition centers have the capacity of training younger Nigerians on different aspects of professionalism under that. This is to help trim the number of this criminality in our own territorial waters. Records, therefore, show that from the third quarter of 2021 until date, we have never recorded one single attack in our own territorial water.
