The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Dr. Dakuku Peterside has blamed the bad performance of Nigeria at the recent elections into the Council of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) on late budgetary approvals from the Federal Executive Council (FEC) and economic recession.
Peterside stated this at a press briefing in Lagos yesterday at the end of a meeting of the 'G7 Friends of Gulf of Guinea Group' in Lagos.
On the rate of pirate activities in the Gulf of Guinea, he said that Nigeria is always being misrepresented by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB), saying that not all criminal activities on the waters can be classified as piracy.
Also, contrary to earlier reports in the media, he said that NIMASA spent less than N100million for the IMO campaign and that only three delegates attended the conference from NIMASA.
He explained that countries like Singapore, China, and United Arab Emirates attended the IMO with a large retinue of delegates.
Peterside said that increase in pirates attack in the nation’s territorial waters and the general impression that Nigeria was not doing enough to tackle the challenge was a major setback on why Nigeria lost in its quest to get re- elected into the council.
He also attributed the failure of Nigeria at the IMO elections to the delay in budgetary provisions from the Federal Executive Council which he said affected early preparations.
According to him, "late preparations and the fact that we did not go round other countries like others did, it would have cost plenty of money, but we are not willing to spend such money. We had considered economic factors in context of our political aspirations"
"It is Nigeria that ran for IMO category ‘C’ and for you to use the name Nigeria, you must get the approval of the man who is managing all the country, the President just got elected, so it would have gone through a process, we have lost some time but the approval eventually came, after we got the approval, there are also budgetary processes to go through, even if the approval was given two years ago, we also need to do the background work to get budgetary provision for it before we begin the campaign, all of these things affected our early preparations"
"But now that we know better, we are starting the next preparations immediately, because we deserve a place in the council of the IMO, these are what we meant by late preparations".
He explained further that, “We cannot wakeup as a country and say we are going to contest IMO elections. The rules of engagement require that we get the approval of the Federal Executive Council and that takes a process. After we got the approval, there are also budgetary processes to go through. All of these take time and affected our early preparation.
“We started late and Nigeria did not spend as much as other countries. Before, whenever Nigeria bids for elections in IMO, we will go from country to country. But this time, we are just coming out of recession and we did not think it is wise to send delegation from country to country.
“If we had got the commitment of the nation early before other nations got their commitment, the outcome will have been different. We are going to start preparation for the biannual election now.
“The choice of who get elected into the council is actually a democratic process. We presented ourselves but a few things were not tidied up which has to do with administrative processes and our campaign was not as portent as it should have been,”
“I cannot deny the fact that the issue of piracy may have had some impact on the elections. Our colleagues did not have much information about what we were doing to tackle piracy and there was a general impression that Nigeria was not doing enough to tackle the issue of piracy,”
On reported cases of pirate activities on the nation’s territorial waters, Dakuku said Nigeria is being misrepresented by figures put up by the International Maritime Bureau even as he explained that there is difference between piracy and other forms of maritime crimes.
“We have noticed that everything that happened within the gulf of guinea is referred to as piracy even when there is a kidnapping within our inland waterways; it is referred to as piracy. We have taken this up with the International Maritime Bureau (IMB) that we have been misrepresented.
“There is difference between piracy and other forms of maritime crimes. They classify everything as cases of piracy instead of trying to do a distinction between other forms of piracy,” he said.
Dakuku explained that the ‘G7 Friends of the Gulf of the Guinea Group’ is one of the international initiatives Nigeria is leveraging on to strengthen the fight against piracy and other criminal activities on the sea.
“What you are seeing now is an international dimension of the fight against piracy and maritime crime which is a new strategy. G7 is an initiative of the group towards finding lasting solution to the issues of security in the gulf of guinea.
“For the first time, they decided to take the programme outside the continent of Europe and the lot fell on Nigeria because they think the Gulf of Guinea suffers the peculiar problem and criminal activities on sea.
Also speaking, Chairman Senate Committee on Navy, Sen. Isah Hamma Misau encouraged the group to sustain its intervention beyond the direct anti-piracy policies to ensure that appropriate resources and taxation flow into the region, so that public health, education and employment are equitably offered in the region.
He said that this would help address the underlying socio-economic root causes of piracy in the region.
He continued that to boost maritime development on the Gulf of Guinea, there is also the need to strengthen maritime institutions and training.
"I see help coming to help us tackle insecurity" ,he said.
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