The Chairman of the Committee on the Review of the Nigerian Ship Registry, Engr. Emmanuel Ilori has assured that the committee is working to ensure that Nigeria has a credible ship registry that the International Oil Companies and banks will not reject as well as one that will provide jobs for Nigerians.
Ilori who made this disclosure in an interview with our correspondent in Lagos on Monday said that this had become necessary because when ships were not from the Nigerian ship registry, they cannot engage in Cabotage trade saying that if they cannot engage in Cabotage trade to support the industry, the financials accruable from therein would not be there rather the industry would witness foreign capital flight.
While informing that the Committee was inaugurated initially without the involvement of the Ministry of Transport, he added that the Ministry of Transport in recognizing the importance of the ship registry and their role as the supervising Ministry became member of that Committee even as he stated that the process of incorporating the Ministry of Transport nominations took some time in the making.
He further said that the Committee had assessed the internal mechanism of the ship registry within the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), the ship registry itself, the physical location and its processes to identify the gap and why the ship registry was not what it should be and why it was not adding value directly to the industry.
According to him,” We have assessed that, we have looked at the users of the ship registry, Nigerian ship owners and critical stakeholders, what their opinions are, what their challenges in relation with ship registry. Again, we have identified their challenges, then this will be part of the holistic review of the ship registry because we cannot move the ship registry forward without having a holistic review. We have looked at the IOCs, those who employ our ship owners and looked at their challenges in respect of their usage of the Nigerian ships and what their challenges are.
“We have looked at those who help the process of ship registration itself – the maritime lawyers, the ship Managers, Surveyors and what their challenges are with the Nigerian ship registry. We have looked at the banks because, in the ship registry, don’t forget that it provides the collateral for investments as mortgage in the ship registry and what the Nigerian investors, the financial institutions opinions are about the Nigerian ship registry.
“So, these are some of the things we have looked at and then the technical integrity of the ship registry is very important to us. So, we looked at the integrity of the ship registry itself and then the global acceptability of the Nigerian ship registry within the limit of our terms of reference because these are the critical output that we need to derive from the Nigerian ship registry.
He pointed out that the committee was working to ensure that the Nigerian ship registry is business friendly; has integrity and that it has global acceptability as according to him, the Nigerian ship registry is the backbone of the Nigerian maritime industry.
“Don’t forget that we have a closed registry which means the Nigerian ship registry is solely for Nigeria itself so that in case Nigeria will need any strategic engagement, you can fall back to the Nigerian ship registry first and foremost and the benefit arising from the new registry of ships in the Nigerian ship registry is very enormous”, he added.
He stated that the purpose of rejigging the Nigerian ship registry was to restore and boost the confidence of the Nigerian ship owners to register their ships in Nigeria and fly the nation’s flag hence the reason the committee was taking its time to look at the challenges holistically so that it could have the buy in of everybody, both the ship owners, the financiers and the ship administration.
On the challenges identified so far by the committee, he said,” One of the things that we looked at is that the financial institutions do not have confidence in the Nigerian ship registry which is critical. If you look at how much has been expended on Nigerian ships finance and you know that the financial institutions don’t have confidence in the Nigerian ship registry is a big issue.
“We looked at the NLNG which is a key investor in the Nigerian maritime sector and they are critical to the Nigerian oil and gas sector and if ships are not registered within the Nigerian ship registry, that is a serious issue. So, we have looked at their challenges, why they are not putting their vessels under the Nigerian ship registry and one of them is that the international technical quality of the Nigerian ship registry is an issue. They have been identified without going into the details. We are then addressing this holistically so that we can attract back the NLNG to the Nigerian ship registry.
“We had just returned from a trip on the international dimension of the ship registry. Don’t forget that we need to make the Nigerian ship registry globally attractive to have global acceptability. So, in so doing, we have visited Europe and America and we have interfaced with the Norwegian ship registry so that we can learn some best practices and Norwegian ship registry is a critical global player within the maritime business. We have interfaced with the Norwegian ship owners association. Again, this is a very critical and very important player with the global maritime community as we learn best practices from them.
“We interfaced with DNVGL, again, a key technical player within the global maritime community that can provide necessary technical support and they were very positive in giving assurance that they will support in the development of the Nigerian ship registry. We interfaced with the UK MCA who is very open to support the Nigerian ship registry reform. But don’t forget that what we are trying to do is to bring the Nigerian ship registry to become the major player within the global maritime system.
“We again visited the Lloyd Register of shipping who gave assurance to help us in the reform process of the Nigerian ship registry and we visited again the American Bureau of Shipping who gave us assurance to look at our processes and they assured us that they will support us. So, in terms of providing technical integrity and global acceptability for the Nigerian ship registry, these are the extent we have gone to make sure that we have a reform that is reflective of what Nigeria wants to see because we know that the ship registry, Nigerian ships itself is a major player in the Nigerian economic development”.
Ilori who is also the National Publicity Secretary of the Nigerian Indigenous Shipowners Association (NISA) said that back from its trip, the committee was now putting together its report with the sole aim of presenting its findings and recommendations to the Management of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the nation at large so that it could begin implementation of the reforms Nigerians would like to see.
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