The Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) has blamed insecurity on the nation’s waterways as the major reason the nation finds it difficult to harness the full potentials of blue economy.
Shipping Position Daily recalls that at the 2019 African Day of Seas and Oceans held last week in Lagos, the Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Dr. Dakuku Peterside said that the Nigerian economy and indeed African countries are currently losing out on the multi-billion dollars opportunities inherent in the blue economy due to their inability to harness the enormous potentials.
He added that this is as the ocean economy of countries like China and the United States of America (USA) reported annual revenue of $962 billion and 10 percent contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of China in 2014 with 9 million jobs created in the same year. USA, on the other hand, valued its ocean economy at $258 billion in 2010, contributing 1.8 percent to the country’s GDP.
Dakuku said that the above statistics according to an Economist Intelligence Unit Report, underscore the opportunities, which Nigeria can use for rapid economic transformation and development.
Reacting to this, the Director General of LCCI, Muda Yusuf told our correspondent that the nation needs to create an enabling environment for her to be able to harness the full potentials of blue economy even as he stressed the need to deal with security issues.
“We have a lot to so, it is about creating an enabling environment for us to be able to harness the potentials of the blue economy. First we need to be able to deal with the security issues because you know we have cases of piracy and all of that, it is a major issue”
“We also need to invest a lot more in our maritime sector particularly our ports and there are quite a lot we can do using our maritime. Then we also need to invest more in water transportation we are not taking advantage of water transportation so that we can argument what we have, the way of transportation”
Explaining the issue of insecurity further, he said that a lot of vessels are afraid to ply the Niger Delta waters.
“What I mean by security is the issue of piracy because for you to harness what is available in the blue economy, you need to have security in that area. You know we have problems of piracy and with that, it will not be easy to do fishing or any other activity in that space that is what I mean”, he said.
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