Reviewing Dakuku’s First 100 Days
Eromosele Abiodun p posits that the Director General, Nigeriang Maritime Administration and Safety yg Agency,y Dr. Dakuku Peterside has in the first 100 days in office recorded some noteworthy achievements
During the Management Performance Review (MPR) held in Lagos a few weeks after his appointment, the Director General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Dr. Dakuku Peterside declared that under his leadership, NIMASA would be transformed into a world class, high performing organisation.
As part of the determination to make the agency a leading one, Peterside launched a Medium Term Maritime Growth Strategy Plan (MTMGSP), designed to run through three years.
In less than 16 years, NIMASA has had 10 DGs, an indication of how rotten the system was. The last DG is now currently facing corruption charges. His predecessor entered a plea bargain to refund some inappropriately appropriated money, while another former DG was sentenced to a five-year jail term.
Meanwhile, the MTMGSP covering three years is built around Peterside’s core mission at NIMASA, which is to reform, restructure and reposition the agency for sustainable growth and development of the maritime industry.
The strategy document is built on five pillars including: Survey, Inspection and Certification Transformation programme; Environment, Security and Search and Rescue Transformation programme; as well as Capacity Building and Promotional Initiatives which entail growing indigenous tonnage, ship building and human capacity.
Others are Digital Transformation Strategy; and Structural and Cultural reforms including changes to work ethic and attitude of staff as well as processes and procedures.
The Many Challenges
Peterside assumed the position at a time the agency was facing a myriad of problems ranging from high level corruption, piracy and man power shortfall amongst other problems. One of the major problems facing NIMASA today is the issue of piracy and security of Nigerian waterways.
The severity of the problem was highlighted at a conference organised by the Nigeria Shippers Council (NSC) by the Chairman of the Port Consultative Council (PCC), Kunle Folarin, who declared that Nigeria will continue to lose millions of dollars in revenue accruable from fishing until both NIMASA and Nigerian Navy agree as to who is in charge of Nigeria’s waterways.
“I think that will probably be well addressed when the struggle between NIMASA and the Nigerian Navy is settled, we will know who is in charge of our territorial waters. This is where we have problem, there is multiple attention of several agencies claiming mandate of a particular function. Unlike the glorious past of now aged seafarers, Nigeria now parades an army of half-baked seafarers because there are no training vessels for their sea time training. As a result, there are many seafarers walking about with fake certificates.
“The demise of the Nigerian National Shipping Line (NNSL) and the consequent loss of opportunity for sea time training for budding seafarers and cadets as well as the challenges faced by the Maritime Academy of Nigeria to turn out world class and employable seafarers have been jointly blamed for the dwindling fortunes of seafarers in Nigeria. These twin factors have jointly led to mass unemployment as well as the prevalence of fake and ill-trained seafarers.”
Another major challenge the MIMASA DG faced in his first year in office was the issue of staff promotion.
Before now, promotion to director cadre had stagnated for over a decade. The new management has broken the jinx and over 300 staff of the agency benefited from a recent promotion exercise. “Despite all the challenges faced during the exercise we were able to pull through,” he stated.
Commenting on the redeployment, he said: “We had the mandate from the President through the Honourable Minister of Transport to go and Reform NIMASA, this we have initiated by first of all knowing that NIMASA cannot work under the defunct structures of JOMALIC and NMA. We also noticed that NIMASA had resourceful members of staff but needed motivation and this we have started by reorientation of the staff. We have introduced a professional and leadership series to grow capacity of staff, thus developing a new work ethics in the Agency. We are by this process reforming the work ethics of the staff for better service delivery.”
Devolution of Powers
This is considered a major achievement of the Peterside’s era at NIMASA. Prior to now, most operations at the agency were centralised. Sailing certificates, payment of bills by stakeholders were coordinated completely from the head office. This was considered cumbersome, leading to loss of valuable business time thus less productivity.
As against what was obtainable in the past, the Peterside led management is implementing a framework that will see more powers devolved to the zones. Preparatory to this, most zones are now headed by substantive directors.
This, NIMASA said, is to ensure that more responsibilities and authority are devolved to the zones thus reducing time to do business with the agency, thus improving efficiency.
“In this era of online communication, a semi autonomous Zonal structure will surely enhance the operation of the agency,” the agency said.
IMSAS Scheme
NIMASA has also complied with the (International Maritime Organisation (IMO) Member State Audit Scheme (IMSAS), a scheme developed by the IMO to assess the extent to which a member state complies with its obligations set out in the various IMO instrument to which it is a party.
It became mandatory since January, 2016. Under the leadership of Peterside, the agency subjected itself to IMO IMSAS in June 2016. Consequently, Nigeria was rated very highly after the exercise.
Before now, Nigeria was out of council at the IMO for over half a decade, thus relegating the country at international politics in the maritime sector. In a bid to reposition the Nigerian maritime sector and make Nigeria it a global voice again, the Heads of African Maritime Administration have agreed to converge in Abuja in April for the 3rd Association of African Maritime Administration Conference. Aside of the immediate benefits of having maritime stakeholders across the globe converge in Nigeria, this will go a long way to enhance the chances of Nigeria to return to Council at IMO at the category C level. NIMASA has gotten presidential approval to seek election in to the category C of the IMO council.
With these, experts believe the Nigerian maritime sector will be repositioned to take its lead in the comity of maritime nations.
Rebranding NIMASA
In a bid to align NIMASA with other foremost maritime administrations in the world, the agency has embarked on a rebranding exercise. The new NIMASA brand, according to sources at the agency, would be unveiled by President Muhammadu Buhari on the 22nd of April which coincides with the hosting of AAMA.
THISADAY findings revealed that the rebranding was conceptualised by Peterside to inject a breath of fresh air to the NIMASA brand.
Also, as part of the management’s drive to make the zones the operational bases of the agency, the board of director’s recently approved the construction of new offices at the Port Harcourt at the Eastern Zone as well as Warri in the central zone. This, it stated, will make stakeholders able to begin and conclude transactions at the zonal level.
Full Automation
The agency has fully automated its operations with the management stressing that the digital transformation strategy is part of its medium term strategy to remove human interface with stakeholders and hasten our processes.
“It is expected that stakeholders will be able to register their vessels and all other transactions with NIMASA with a click of a button on their lap top. On-line transactions with highly sophisticated security measures are being encouraged by this administration. In information driven age that we live in, access to information definitely enhance operations of any maritime administration,” it stated.
That is not all, within six months in office, the Peterside led management upgraded Nigeria’s subscription of the Lloyds list intelligence to a full bouquet which is beyond the previous capacity of the sea searcher and this now guarantee unfettered access to current data in the maritime industry. This, stakeholders believe, has improved on the volume and value of data available to Nigerian maritime stakeholders.
Recently, the US Coast Guard visited the country to ascertain the level of security at the Nigerian Ports. NIMASA, the Designated Authority (DA) for the implementation of the ISPS code in Nigeria was highly commended by the US Coast Guard delegation for its implementation strides.
Tasks Ahead
Coastal and Inland Shipping Act 2007 has been begging for full implementation over the years. The law, popularly called Cabotage law was intended to protect indigenous interests for investors and professionals.
Close to a decade after its enactment, the law has not met 10 per cent of its expectations from stakeholders. It was expected to synchronise with the Nigerian Content Act owing to their uniformity of purpose. While Peterside has taken steps to address the matter, more still needs to be done.
Another major issue that stakeholders want the NIMASA DG to address is the problem of foreign owned vessels.
This is because even in the face of few available job openings in the sector, foreigners and foreign owned vessels still dominate Nigerian waters.
Also, given that NIMASA is supposed to take the lead in shipping development, which is part of its mandates, one would expect Peterside to take shipping development as his top-line agenda, because we all know the effect of capital flight on the economy.
“He needs to bring someone who is an industry person to drive the affairs of the agency. The industry person should be the one who is technically competent and who also has political reach. So, there are two ways to look at it, if you have someone with knowledge of the industry but without the political reach, it will not be very fine. And if you have someone with political reach and who does not have the other two qualities is equally dangerous but the top management team can combine all these qualities then we can be sure that we will have a very formidable industry,” a stakeholder declared.