We may not be totally correct, but facts point to the fact that it was during the glorious tenure of Chief Adebayo Babatunde Sarumi as the managing director of Nigerian Shippers Council that the annual seminar for judges became so popular that the bar and the bench and relevant stakeholders in the maritime sector look forward annually to the various brainstorming sessions that the Nigerian Shippers Council’s annual seminar for judges has come to be known for.
Conceived about 11 years ago when Dr Kingsley Usoh was the chief executive as an avenue for legal practitioners to interact with shipping practitioners, so that the former can have a better understanding of admiralty issues and so be better equipped to handle related cases when brought before them.
The Nigerian Shippers’ Council annual seminar for judges has (for about 11 years running) offered a robust platform for he two divides to collaborate on maritime-related legal interpretation leading to a better understanding of the industry by the bench. The result is a quicker and fairer dispensation of admiralty cases.
It is shocking to see the Nigerian Maritime Administration Safety Agency (NIMASA); a sister agency under the same ministry of transport put together a new seminar for judges which it ‘smartly’ tagged: First Strategic Admiralty Law Seminar for Judges”.
The two-legged seminar which held in Calabar, Cross River state and Lagos for four days last week expectedly drew participants from the bar and the bench; just like the Shippers Council’s annual seminar.
But, unlike the more-than-a –decade old and more all-embracing and detailed Shippers Council’s seminar for judges, the NIMASA admiralty seminar focused on the interpretation and enforcement of the Coastal and Inland Shipping and other subsidiary legislations.
And confirming the position of some stakeholders that the NIMASA seminar was quite unnecessary, the agency’s director general, Mr Temi Omatseye said this: The Cabotage law for instance, was preceded with so much fanfare and regarded as a revolutionary piece of legislation at the time of its enactment, capable of empowering Nigerian operators in Shipping”.
This can only mean that NIMASA believes that the failure of Cabotage is as a result a weak understanding or lack of understanding of the Cabotage Act by the bench. This is not true, Cabotage failed because successive management of NIMASA either had little or no understanding or had little or no time to understand and probably implement it. The second leg of it is that Cabotage failed because the law itself is deficient and is already due for a review.
That Judges of High Courts threw out the few cases that were brought before them by (not even NIMASA) Indigenous Shipowners Association of Nigeria was not because the bench is not sufficiently knowledgeable about the provisions of Cabotage. It was because the platform upon which the indigenous shipowners based their argument was very weak.
Rather than ridiculously organise last week’s seminar, what NIMASA ought to have done is to liaise with the Nigerian Shippers’ Council to incorporate (Cabotage) Act 2003, NIMASA Act 2007 and the Merchant Shipping Act 2007 as part of the next annual seminar for judges. By that NIMASA would have saved a substantial part of what it wasted last week.
Discussion about this post