The newly elected President of the Nigerian Ship owners Association (NISA), Capt. Dada Olaniyi Labinjo has said that the association would form what he called a Maritime Cluster as part of his agenda for the association.
Speaking on the sideline of his election as the new President of NISA in Lagos on Friday, Capt. Labinjo opined that creating a Maritime Cluster was what the association needed to do immediately in order to get their jobs back.
He disclosed that on the 15th of October, 2014, South Africa formed their own Maritime Cluster adding that Nigeria would form her own without further delay.
Explaining what he meant by Maritime Cluster, he said,” Maritime Cluster is about putting the ship in the centre and when you have the ship in the centre, three people are responsible for the ship in the centre, they are; the ship owner, the ship charterer and the buyer. These three people must always be in the centre and every other person including government agencies; they are on the periphery supporting the ship”.
“Government agencies are also providing service, they are service providers. So, if you are a Maritime service provider, you need to do well. So, in addition to government agencies providing services, they also regulate us, that is why foreign government agencies had what they called after sales service”.
“Now, Maritime Administrations all over the world, they have what is called after sales service. So, we must now together with our government agencies work. Note, I don’t want to use the word collaboration, I don’t want to use the word synergize because those ones have been bastardized, they have been over used, they no longer have their meaning”.
“We are going to be embedded with them. To be embedded means you are tightly working with them, they have no option. Our jobs must come back”.
On plans to ensure that members of his association get jobs, the incoming NISA boss affirmed that the moment their ships started getting jobs, they would employ people as according to him, jobs would be automatically created.
According to him,” look, let me tell you, two cargoes arrive Nigeria everyday for tankers, sixty thousand metric tons arrive Nigeria everyday at the rate of 15,000. You need four ships every day. If you carry cargo today, you will still be filled by the time the next one arrives tomorrow”.
“So, you will need four ships again tomorrow, by next tomorrow, you will still need four ships. Maybe, if you take the fourth one today, the first set of ship that loaded will be releasing, isn’t it? Having twenty ships working within five days and I am saying that you can now have our ship, once they start working, jobs are automatically created. The ship owners will have jobs, the ship brokers will have jobs, the various agencies and service providers will have jobs and we are saying that this can easily be done, that is for tankers”.
“Then, for the offshore, very simple also, 33 platforms that we have and several other oil wells, they need ships to support them just for each of them. Some of them need as many as five ships to support them. So, if you have, like we have about three thousand, eight hundred platforms and what have you, you multiply that by four or five ships, that give you about 20,000 ships. We are not having ten percent of that”.
He remarked that it was not Capt. Labinjo but all the members of the association adding that the same way they trooped out to select their leaders, the same way, they would all go back to their respective Zones and make sure that they deepened and owned the implementation of the Cabotage Act as well as the Nigerian Local Content Act.
Capt. Labinjo further posited that there was no other special approach to get things work the way they should than to keep their eyes open and never to allow somebody who come to take away their jobs to do so adding that there was now a new awareness.
