The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dakuku Peterside has restated that the agency is committed to ensuring the viability of the maritime sector to encourage domestic and foreign investors in Nigeria’s maritime industry.
Peterside made this known at the weekend at the investiture of Mr. Andrew Isichei as the President of the Nigerian Chamber of Shipping (NCS) and the inauguration of the members of the NCS Governing Council.
The Director General who was represented by the agency’s Executive Director, Finance and Administration, Mr. Bashir Jamoh stated that NIMASA under him was leaving no stone unturned to ensure that the sector remained viable and most importantly help build stakeholders’ confidence in investing in the industry.
According to him, “in line with our mandate of promoting shipping and related activities in Nigeria, we are leaving no stone unturned in advancing Nigeria’s global maritime goals. The vast maritime opportunities that abound in the country need to be harnessed especially as the present administration under President Muhammadu Buhari strives to diversify the economy. We will ensure that our maritime domain becomes more virile and attractive to you stakeholders and other industry players to further build your confidence to invest in the sector”.
Dr. Peterside also reeled out the strides the agency was making to ensure safety and security in the maritime space adding that the NIMASA’s 24 Hour Surveillance system was capable of monitoring and spotting all illegal activities on the waterways.
He also said that owing to NIMASA’s implementation of the International Ships and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code in Nigeria, the ports and terminals were now safer and more reliable to do business adding that the compliance level of the code in the country had been adjudged to be over 80 per cent from the about 13 percent it was when NIMASA took over as the Designated Authority.
Consequently, the NIMASA DG said that the hosting of Heads of African Maritime Administration Conference in Abuja recently was to further open more channels of maritime businesses between the Nigerian investors and their foreign counterpart.
In his words “Our hosting of African Heads of Maritime Administrations (AAMA) in Nigeria was intended to give you stakeholders a platform to interact with your contemporaries around the world in order to open more maritime opportunities for you, for those who were able to find time to be with us in Abuja for the event, I am quite confident that some useful contacts and engagements were made towards harnessing the various hitherto untapped opportunities”.
In his speech, the new President of the NCS, Mr. Isichei commended the agency for driving the process of repositioning the maritime sector.
“I will like to commend NIMASA for making valuable efforts towards repositioning the Nigerian Maritime Industry. Recently NIMASA hosted the AAMA Conference in which regional maritime security issues were at the front burner. We will continue to support NIMASA in working with our neighbouring countries to ensure that issues of piracy and other maritime related crimes at sea become a thing of the past”, the NCS President added.
It would be recalled the Dr. Dakuku Peterside ever since his assumption of duty had always noted that the NIMASA management had the mandate of President Muhammadu Buhari to reposition the Nigerian maritime industry and stakeholders had been showering encomiums on the leadership skills exhibited by Dr. Dakuku which also didn’t go unnoticed by foreign stakeholders, leading to the election of the NIMASA boss as Chairman of AAMA at the recently concluded conference of the continental body in Abuja.
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