Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA); Dr Dakuku Peterside has said that despite the capacity of Nigerian shipping sector to provide 10million jobs, lack of implementation of shipping policies has killed the numerous opportunities.
Peterside stated this in Lagos while delivering a paper at the 2018 End of the Year Workshop and Dinner organised by the Shipowners Association of Nigeria (SOAN).
The paper was titled "Effective Policy Implementation: A Panacea for Sustainable Participation and Growth of Nigerian Shipowners in the Maritime Sector"
He lamented that lack of enforcement of some policies such as Cabotage Act, National Shipping Policy, Port Reform Policy, Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) Nigerian Seafarers Development Program (NSDP) has caused the shipping sector to continue to experience a stunted growth.
The NIMASA boss also identified lack of funding as one of the major challenge of Nigerian Shipowners. He however assured that the agency has entered an engagement with the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on the need to create a special facility for operators in the maritime sector.
Peterside disclosed that one of the opportunities being worked out is for Nigerian shipowners to have access to a special FOREX window in order to compete competitively with their foreign counterparts.
He said, “it is not absence of policies, we have had policies in this country but despite all, we are still having a stunted growth"
"One main reason why the shipping policy did not succeed is that we had a problem of poor implementation of policies.
Some other reason is that we do not have the supporting institutional framework for these policies to work, we simply make statement of intent without the determination and the institutional framework to make it work"
There are some cases where we didnt have the financing to make it work, but the common denomination in all of these is poor implementation of policies" he said
The NIMASA boss also disclosed that what differentiates other nations from Nigeria is that, whereas other nations religiously implement their policies, Nigeria half heatedly implement its policies.
He also observed the non-involvement of stakeholders at the formulation stage of the maritime policies.
"Those of us in government have this sense that we know better than others, when we get to office, we believe we are experts" he said.
"Everyday we churn out policies, lack of capacity, lack of funding, lack of institutional framework, globalisation and trade liberalisation have put pressure on Nigeria and our policies cannot make us compete against those better than us".
In his welcome address, President of SOAN, Engr Greg Ogbeifunt noted that the true potential of the Nigerian maritime sector cannot be realized without effective collaboration between policy makers, regulators, ship owning companies and other key stakeholders.
According to him, "It is on this premise that SOAN was inaugurated and launched to strengthen and sustain the desired connect among key players in the maritime sector while initiating and promoting discourse and activities on emerging issues in the sector for the sake of achieving a robust and holistic maritime agenda"
“Since her inauguration in November 2014, SOAN has become an important enabler of maritime discourse both within and outside Nigeria ", he said
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