The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dakuku Peterside has expressed the agency’s determination to strengthen its zonal operations to become the centre of the agency’s activities.
By so doing, the agency plans to devolve more power to the zonal offices, grant them more autonomy and authority to handle the agency’s statutory mandate without recourse to the head office.
Peterside who made this disclosure while meeting with staff and stakeholders in Warri as part of his working visit to the Central Zone in continuation of his familiarisation tour of the agency’s offices and facilities also assured stakeholders that the agency had concluded plans to automate its processes to enhance efficiency in the discharge of its duties.
He noted that staff are the most valuable resource of the agency and assured them of Management’s commitment to the enhancement of their welfare to engender greater productivity at all times.
The DG promised that Management would do all that was necessary to provide the right working tools for staff who he charged to redouble their efforts towards making the agency a performance driven organisation that all Nigerians would be proud of.
Responding to questions from stakeholders, the DG said that peace was the panacea for the development of the Niger Delta region.
The Director General who decried incessant militancy and youth restiveness in the region also called on opinion leaders and elders to call the restive youths to order so as to engender the development of the Niger Delta Region.
According to the DG, “We have a problem; the level of insecurity in the Niger Delta cannot be an incentive to economic growth. And so when you say everything moves to Lagos, they are reacting to the forces of demand and supply, economic factors”.
He observed that the level of insecurity in the region has rather scared away genuine investors who think that the region was not safe to do business.
While acknowledging that some of the demands of the agitators were germane, the DG noted that there were better ways of going about their demands without degrading the environment by bursting pipelines that take away the livelihoods of a lot of people in coastal communities.
The Director General has visited the Cabotage Enforcement Office in Sapele, the floating dock berthed at the Naval Base in Sapele, the Search and Rescue Base clinic, Maritime Safety office, Maritime Labour office and the Central Zonal Office all in Warri as part of his working visit to the operational offices of the agency.
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