The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has given the All Progressives Congress (APC) a 72 hours ultimatum to retract its statement and offer an apology to it or face legal action.
Addressing newsmen in a press conference in Lagos on Sunday, the Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Ziakede Patrick Akpobolkemi described the statement by APC describing the agency as the President’s ATM as well as the sponsors of hate campaigns against the APC Presidential candidate as false and malicious.
Akpobolokemi reminded the APC that the agency was not a political party rather a responsible government agency trying its best to fulfill the mandate setting it up as an organization adding that NIMASA would not be dragged into malicious politicking by its accusers neither would it be intimidated into not parading its achievements nor shy away from its core responsibility.
He recalled that it had became a deliberate orchestrated attempt to undermine and rubbish all performing and strategic institutions of the Federal Government of Nigeria saying that the APC had mounted relentless attack and vicious propaganda, all in the name of politics to attack the Nigerian Army, Police, Directorate of State Security, NNPC and its latest victim-NIMASA.
According to him,” prominent amongst the falsehood perpetrated by APC against NIMASA is the allegation that NIMASA contracted the country’s maritime security to a private firm they claimed is owned by Tompolo. I here unequivocally state that this accusation is false. NIMASA neither entered into any such security contract with any private company nor with Tompolo”.
“Also very embarrassing is the APC’s allegation that NIMASA is the ATM of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan. For God’s sake, if a political party is smelling defeat in the near future, let it go and solve its own problem and insulate us from politicking or any kind of political campaigns etc”.
“How can somebody come and make baseless accusations and statements and go scot free. We want to challenge them. More worrisome is the recent one that NIMASA is the one sponsoring some documentaries on APC or the candidate of the APC in the Presidential election. It is completely false and malicious”.
“So, all these accusations either from the APC or disgruntled Nigerians are false, baseless, malicious, vicious, wicked and cannot be supported by any evidence and therefore, NIMASA has decided to give APC 72 hours to retract their statement and offer an apology to NIMASA or the Management of NIMASA will take all necessary legal and legitimate action against the party”.
The NIMASA boss further declared that the allegation that NIMASA had refused to pay or delayed the school fees of the Cadets on training abroad under the National Seafarers’ Development Programme (NSDP) resulting into ejection of such students from their schools as untrue.
He said,” we are not having any problem with payment of school fees of our students. It was NIMASA that decided to embark on this project and NIMASA is consistently meeting its obligation. So, that media campaign that NIMASA is not paying their fees and to that extent the students are being ejected, they are not attending classes is completely untrue and it is part of the falsehood”.
He reiterated that the agency’s success story which was globally celebrated today was borne out of hard work, visionary leadership and team spirit which could not be dampened regardless of the orchestrated attempts to trivialize the giant strides of the administration.
“No amount of smear campaign by the APC or any other body for that matter will divert us from our committed course and vision of bequeathing a robust Maritime Safety Administration to generation unborn”, he said.
