As Peterside Turns NIMASA Around
Wale Suleiman highlights the various measures put in place by Dakuku Peterside to repositionthe Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency
If a list of government agencies that have failed to realise their full potentials over the years is drawn, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) will easily top the list. No sector has been bogged down by corruption and incompetence as the maritime sector.
In 2015 when the economy started showing some serious signs of depression and government officials shied away from calling it recession, Olisa Agbakoba, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), a long time player in the maritime sector, alerted the authorities on the potential of the sector as an alternative to oil. Agbakoba said, in an interview, that Nigeria could generate as high as N7 trillion annually from the maritime sector if the right things were done.
He lamented that the sector was not managed as a revenue earner. He spoke with the conviction of an expert. It was as if government was more interested in political patronages than in good governance.
But luckily enough, one man had listened to him. The man was the former Governorship Candidate of the All Progressive Congress, APC, and now the Director General of NIMASA, Dr Dakuku Peterside.
Since assuming office, Peterside, a former lawmaker, has left no one in doubt as to his determination to ensure NIMASA achieves its full potentials as a major revenue earner for the country. When he led a delegation of NIMASA to the Comptroller General of the Nigerian Customs Service (NCS) Col. Hameed Ali (rtd), he did not mince words about his vision for the agency.
He told Ali that the Nigerian Customs and NIMASA were both revenue earning agencies of government now working to accomplish the purpose of facilitating trade to Nigeria, and ensuring that those doing business with the country did not take undue advantage of her. It speaks so much of the vision of this man that he is committing himself and the agency he heads to the service of the country.
Although a politician, Peterside is not running NIMASA as his predecessors did. He appears to have placed premium on professionalism, integrity, transparency and President Muhammadu Buhari’s plan to diversify the economy and get it quickly out of the current recession.Since coming on board, the present management of NIMASA adopted a Medium Term Strategic Plan which has aided steps towards repositioning the Agency for better service delivery.In the words of Dr Peterside, “our principal mandate is to restructure, reposition, reorganise and reform NIMASA and make it a foremost Maritime Administration in Africa because we have no reason not to be number one in Africa. Of every 100 cargo heading to Africa 65 would come to Nigeria and in this regard we must ensure that our maritime sector remains vibrant” Recently when Abdulwaheed Odusile, President of the Nigerian Union f Journalists, NUJ, led a delegation to his office in Lagos, Peterside used the occasion to call on journalists to support the Buhari administration’s fight against corruption and diversification of the economy.
He said with him at the head of NIMASA, the maritime industry was ready to take over from oil as the leading revenue earner in the country and called on all stakeholders to look into the opportunity that abound in the sector.
One of the memorable things he told the NUJ delegation was that “the ocean is a resource a country can leverage on to grow its economy and blessed with a coastline of about 853km and 250 nautical mile Exclusive Economic zone, we must begin to take advantage of the maritime opportunities available to us to grow our economy”.
But to realise this objective, NIMASA must ensure adequate provision of basic infrastructure that could help unlock the vast potentials of the Nigerian maritime industry. But government, whose revenue has been on the downturn, cannot be wholly depended upon to provide all the funds for infrastructural development. This is why Peterside’s NIMASA has embraced Public, Private Partnership model, PPP, for the provision of infrastructure. NIMASA is partnering with the Infrastructure Concession and Regulatory Commission (ICRC), to make this happen. Given Nigeria’s strategic location, population and volume of trade in the African region, all the country needs to become a major hub of maritime activities is a strategic investment in infrastructure in the maritime industry, which should be championed through a PPP model. Dr Peterside seems keenly aware of this when he said during a meeting with ICRC that “the PPP model will be able to address infrastructure deficit as well as optimize local content development. Partnership with the private sector also has the potential to enhance human capital development and active government participation in a private sector driven economy”.
Looking beyond budgetary resources for the delivery of infrastructure in the country, especially in the maritime sector, is not only imperative but cost effective. This is the model that is being embraced the world over, and Nigeria cannot be an exception, especially if we desire rapid economic progress. In a country where the wheel of government grinds slowly, PPP is a sure bet for quick transformation.
NIMASA under the amiable Peterside has focused on its core mandate through various collaborative efforts geared towards the development of the sector and by extension the Nigerian economy. These include delivering excellent service in the areas of Maritime safety, making the maritime domain safe and navigable, providing adequate supervision for the marine environmental management, and averting and reducing pollution at sea.
It has also focused on meeting relevant International Maritime Organisation (IMO) mandate as well as helping to grow indigenous shipping, and carrying out port and flag state responsibilities.
Such collaborative efforts include working with relevant professional groups to take advantage of their expertise and annex for a quick turnaround of the maritime sector. The new maritime administration is desirous of keeping pace with modern practice where skilled professionals are utilized to ensure efficient regulation of the sector.
Associations such as that of Marine Engineers and Surveyors, a critical stakeholder in the sector, are having a new lease of life as NIMASA collaborates with them and engages their expertise. He is also developing local capacity in the sector for global competitiveness.
Nigerian youths in the maritime sector are now in line to earn foreign exchange as NIMASA has made provisions for the beneficiaries of the Nigerian Seafarers’ Development Programme (NSDP) to obtain their Certificate of Competence (CoC) by undergoing requisite sea time training to qualify them for global shipping. This supports his assertion that a country could have ships and other assets, but its greatest asset in the maritime industry is manpower, because it is the manpower that drives the industry. Peterside has also expressed support for the establishment of the Maritime University at Okerenkoko, in Warri South West Area of Delta State. He said the university would help as a citadel of knowledge and development of human capital. But it will also create job opportunities for the Nigerian people, particularly for people in the Niger Delta.
He has also commenced the process to establish partnership with the Tertiary Education Trust Fund (TETFUND) to develop human capacity in the maritime sector. Peterside has repeatedly expressed his determination to grow local capacity in the maritime sector, and that is why he has called on universities in the country to include maritime related courses in their curriculum. This will not just help grow the economy but will expand the job potentials of Nigerian youths since maritime is a global business with vast opportunities.
If NIMASA under Peterside succeeds in getting out of the water to take its rightful place in the economy, Nigeria may well be on the path to economic Eldorado.