The Marine Engineers and Naval Architects (MENA) Division of the Nigerian society of Engineers (NSE) has called for the amendment of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and safety Agency (NIMASA) Act of 2007, the Cabotage Act of 2003 an the Nigerian Oil and gas Industry Content Development Act of 2010 to take care of the development and maintenance of the dock facilities in the country.
This was part of the Communique issued at the end of a one day Conference and Annual General Meeting of the Division held in Lagos on Tuesday with the theme,” The Development of marine Structures in the Nigerian Economy: Challenges and the Way Forward”.
The Conference also want the maritime industry stakeholders like the Maritime Regulators, ships builders (dock yards and ship yards, maritime professional institutions and groups, owners and operators of ships including trawlers, international oil and gas and the classification societies to work together to ensure proper provision of infrastructure in the industry.
While emphasizing the lack of human resources and technical services in the industry, MENA called for the development of maritime structures by developing the environmental, cluster, knowledge and the R and D attractiveness.
The Conference further went on to suggest that there should be a synchronization of the Nigerian National Petroleum Commission (NNPC) Oil and gas Department and the Ministry of Transport as it affect lifting of Nigeria Crude oil as was being practice by ARAMCO and the Iranian tankers.
It however decried the building of tank farms in close proximity to sea side which should have been mapped out for ship yard development thus calling for sound maritime environment friendly policies to be formulated.
It further called for the establishment of a Central knowledge hub that would coordinate all maritime infrastructural activities in Nigeria as well as the establishment of an indigenous classification society in the country.
On the banks’ lending rate, the conference suggested that the Canadian and the Norwegian examples should be taken as a lead where banks’ lending rates were made attractive for practitioners in the maritime structures to function even as it advocated for the involvement of the Bank of industry (BOI) and commercial banks in vessel acquisition.
