…Wants him to be fair in administering the agency
A maritime lawyer, Barrister Osuala Emmanuel Nwagbara has lauded the appointment of Barr. Calistus Nwabueze Obi as the new Director-General of the nation’s apex maritime agency, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) in an acting capacity.
It would be recalled that President Muhammadu Buhari last week Thursday announced the removal of the former Director-General of the agency, Dr. Ziakede Patrick Akpobolokemi directing that he hand over to the most senior staff of the agency to act in that capacity pending the appointment of a substantive Director-General thus paving the way for the emergence of Obi as the Acting DG on Tuesday.
Speaking to newsmen in Lagos on Tuesday, Nwagbara welcomed the development describing Obi as a friend of the stakeholders in the maritime industry even as he opined that there was hardly any occasion he was invited that he did not attend in his capacity as the Executive Director Maritime Labour and Cabotage Services.
He disclosed that during the last Nigerian Maritime Expo (NIMAREX) 2015 event, the new Acting DG of NIMASA was there for three days adding that he was there till the last minute.
According to him,” Even, the stakeholders I had spoken to since the news filtered out are happy that he is coming onboard. Infact, they are looking forward to his being confirmed as the DG because he is somebody you don’t have to book appointment before you see him in the office. His doors are always open and he has a listening ear. He is somebody who is very free, he is a friend of the industry. I wish him goodluck.
Speaking on his being relatively new in the industry, Nwagbara who is also the Managing Partner of the Maritime and Commercial Law Chambers opined that he (Obi) had learned very fast on the job saying that he was somebody who had persistently presented a position that ship owners in Nigeria must be empowered even as he observed that the NIMASA DG felt the pains that he was not in the position to influence directly the disbursement of the Cabotage Vessels Financing Fund to ship owners.
“Even at the last conference, if you were there, you would have heard it when he admonished the ship owners, he said he is challenging them to form a group, they should be united, that the money is their money. He said this CVFF is their money, they should come together as a group and they should form a company and get money to finance it.
“But when they begin to present individual frontiers as individual company owners, then it is being politicized at various levels of government but when they come out, pull their resources together and conclude their contracts to get one big vessel, I think it should be like a moving train, nobody should stand on the way. He has always asked them even at the last NIMAREX .
“So, he has learned very fast. He has learned so much about maritime labour, of course, he is a lawyer and cabotage service and maritime labour, they are laws. Look at MLC 2006, it is law from A to Z. The Cabotage regime in Nigeria, it is all law, the implementation is law, everything about it is law”, he said.
On his advice to the new DG, Nwagbara who is also the Secretary, NIMAREX 2015 Planning Committee had this to say,” My advice to him is that he should maintain his open door policy for the stakeholders, be a nationalist in the administration of NIMASA, do the right thing as always, listen to stakeholders, assist them whenever he can and present to government, the needs of the stakeholders in the maritime industry. I wish him the best”.
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