The Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi will be the Special Guest of Honour at the 2nd Maritime Technical Summit coming up on the 22nd of May, 2018 at the Eko Hotels and Suites, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The summit which has as its theme, “Ship Operations in Nigeria: Policy, Technical, Financial Challenges and Solutions: The Perspective of the Association of Marine Engineers and Surveyors (AMES)” is scheduled to take off by 10:00am.
Speaking on the nitty-gritty of the event, the Vice President of AMES and Chairman Planning Committee for the Summit, Engr. Yinka Okunade observed that the Technical Summit is usually to identify a particular problem that is facing the maritime industry and to proffer solution and suggest those solutions to the authorities.
Okunade state that the theme of the summit is a very relevant one as according to him, it is built around an issue that is really affecting the maritime industry even as he said that they are going to have eminent personalities to handle the topics that they have carefully selected.
He said,” We can tell you that we have a very prominent, important, experienced and qualified member of our association in the name of Engr. Olu Akinsoji, he is well known in the industry, he is going to be one of the speakers. We also have a vibrant member of this association who is even currently, the Chairman of the Committee on Ship Registry which is trying to reform the Nigerian flagged vessels in the name of Engr. Emmanuel Ilori”.
Also speaking, the President of AMES, Engr. Charles Uwadia disclosed that the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Barr. Hassan Bello has indicated to be part of the summit and has accepted to partner with them on the summit even as he added that Bello has also volunteered to present one of the key papers on policies at the summit.
“And then we even went a step further, Greg Ogbeifun of Starzs, who is the President of SOAN is going to talk on ship acquisition and the challenges. We are even bringing Diamond Bank to give us an insight into the problems they are having in financing ship acquisition and maintenance because this is one area we are having a lot of problems when it comes to capacity building. So, the Diamond bank has agreed and accepted to be part of the event and also to present a paper on that day.
“In fact, we have our own respectable Czar in the industry, Chief Adebayo Sarumi is going to be there also to moderate the technical section and then, at the end of the day, they will be giving us a problem, we now sit down and look at the way forward”, he said.
The AMES boss recalled that the previous edition of the summit held in April, 2016 at the Sheraton Hotels in Lagos recorded a lot of successes saying that, it was after that summit that a committee was set up to look at the national fleet, a committee was set up to rejig NIMASA explaining that the Committee on ship registry that was set up recently is also a fallout from the rejigging of NIMASA.
He continued,” So, you can see that a lot of good things came out of that summit and we are hoping that with this summit, better things will come.
“We have sent out letters to all the government agencies; NPA, Shippers’ Council, NIWA and of course, DG NIMASA. And again, because these parastatals are directly involved in implementing the shipping policy, we have also asked them to do ten minutes presentation each to highlight the problems they are having implementing the policies in the maritime sector”.
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