BABAJIDE OKEOWO
Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) is fashioning out a regime of eliminating Cabotage waivers for non-indigenous shipowners within the next five years.
The move is geared towards full implementation of the Cabotage Act, which Nigeria enacted in 2003 and which has largely remained unimplemented. The Act seeks to promote indigenous participation in the country’s coastal shipping trade.
The proposal was thrown up at a parley in Lagos between NIMASA and stakeholders in the shipping industry. The plan would see to the collaboration of stakeholders to facilitate optimal implementation of the Cabotage law.
At a meeting, which held at the NIMASA headquarters in Apapa, Lagos, the Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Dakuku Peterside, hinted that the agency was determined to ensure that Cabotage waivers were stopped in the next five years.
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He said: “NIMASA’s mandate is all about promoting and regulating shipping in Nigeria and we have no intentions to stifle anybody’s business. Rather, we are committed to promoting, protecting and providing the enabling environment so that the local ship owners can grow and compete with their international counterparts. We are certainly determined to work with our stakeholders.”
Dakuku, who was represented by the Executive Director, Maritime Labour and Cabotage Services, Mr. Gambo Ahmed, told the stakeholders that part of the strategy to bring an end to the issuance of waivers was to develop infrastructural capacity and human capital with respect to training of seafarers to attain global standards.
He called on stakeholders to cooperate with the agency to realise the Cabotage implementation, saying it holds a huge potential “to create jobs, add to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), and bring about a boom in the economy.”
The stakeholders at the meeting agreed that NIMASA was the only Federal Government agency that has the mandate to regulate and enforce shipping activities in Nigeria and urged it to use the powers bestowed on it by law to ensure total compliance with the Cabotage Act and apply punitive measures against erring shipping companies.
They commended NIMASA’s efforts at ensuring the implementation of the Act, stating that the ports are critical to economic growth.
They also applauded the efforts of the present management of NIMASA to actualise a robust maritime sector through various stakeholder-oriented programmes and promised their full support and cooperation. Furthermore, they called on the Federal Government to support the NIMASA to