Director-General of the Nigeria Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Bashir Jimoh, has reacted to recent attacks on him in the media which border on financial prolificacy, nepotism and corruption, saying all were the handiwork of those who want to take over as director general in the agency.
Jamoh who spoke with The Nigerian Economy, an online newspaper in an interview said he was tired of hearing the barrage of allegations which has become a pastime for his detractors.
He also blamed part of his travails to his close relationship with former President Mohammed Buhari whose niece he is married to while his daughter is married to Buhari’s nephew.
Jamoh lamented: “From what I gathered, one, they are looking at my relationship with the previous government.
“Two, too many people are after my seat. I think they are the ones sponsoring all these malicious accusations, but it is not enough for me to deny the accusations. I want to charge all journalists to delve into the issues and see for themselves, whatever accusations they have against me.”
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Jamoh said he was getting tired of hearing the myriads of accusations against him, wondering what it all portends for his enemies and the country at large.
He denied all the accusations and reports of corruption against him saying that budgeting is done according to the needs and priorities of the agency and approved by the national assembly.
“Some of these allegations have gone to the SSS. I am very tired. I think in the future many good people won’t like to work for the government because there is no point for me burning my youthful age serving my country.
“I spent seven years serving Kaduna State Government, and now, 30 years serving the Federal Government, only for somebody to take paper and biro and start to write fictitious lies against me. What will I do with this money?
“This is not the first time these people are doing this. They alleged that I have N45 trillion. The entire budget of NIMASA from its days as NMA till today is not up to that.
“The bank they said I have N1.5 trillion, the entire banking assets and deposit of that bank are not up to N1.5 trillion.
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”I have never maintained an account with Fidelity Bank. I don’t have a foreign account and I don’t have any company account.
“My account is one salary account. So how do I get that money? They said that I inflated the NIMASA budget.
“How do I inflate the budget, when the budget goes through the National Assembly?
“They said the budget for training went up by 500%. I was the head of training at the agency before I was promoted to the Executive Director level.
“Since 2020 when we had COVID, we don’t have large sums for training.
” This matter was taken to the National Assembly and is well known.
“Journalists can visit our office and ask for our financial reports. I am always transparent.”
Jamoh insisted that he was not ready to join issues with his detractors, noting that he deliberately declined approval to all statements written by the agency’s Public Relations Department in reaction to some of the allegations.
“Just last week, the same media organization reported that we didn’t deploy the Deep Blue project. Can you imagine that?
” The Nigerian Navy, Army and Air Force are the ones manning the assets, not NIMASA and the Navy came to NIMASA recently to explain that these assets have been deployed and they are using them.
” The President wrote to direct us to release air platforms to the Nigerian Air Force, water platforms to the Navy and land assets to the Nigerian Army.
“And these assets were deployed accordingly and we have even seen the effect in the recent reduction in piracy.
“I am in Ghana now, and the Chief of Army staff is here too. He was the one who spoke on the operations of the Deep Blue Project and everybody was clapping.
“Last year, we had the NISA (Nigerian Indigenous Shipowners Association) dinner and the Nigerian Navy disclosed that their capacity had been increased by 50%.
“I have been quiet. The agency’s communication department has been writing but I don’t want to react by myself to these unfounded allegations.
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” I want journalists to write. I just read here in Ghana about a civil society organization protesting in Abuja saying that allegations about me are a distraction. I don’t know them, but I am just reading it now here in Ghana.”
He maintained that every agency’s budget is tailored to meet the needs of the agency.
“If the budget increases, it depends on the priorities that we have. I don’t know what they saying, but I can state that nobody took a kobo for doing nothing.
“The training we had we made it more elaborate and tried to divide the training in terms of professionalism.
“So many professional trainings we were not doing before, now we do. I have put the agency on the global maritime page.
“Before I took over the management of the agency, we didn’t have any vessel.
“Now we have five brand new vessels built with bulletproof,” he concluded.