The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has said that it has commissioned six speed boats in order to strengthen its Memorandum of Understanding ( MoU) between her and the Nigerian Navy in curbing piracy.
Disclosing this fact to stakeholders at a maritime forum held at the weekend in Lagos, Director General of NIMASA; Dr Dakuku Peterside also said that the agency is approaching the National Assembly to change the term of affreightment of Nigerian crude from Free on-board (FOB) to Cost Insurance and Freight (CIF)
Represented by Mr. Anthony Ogidi, Peterside said that NIMASA is conscious of the fact that Nigeria must have an environment that is safe and secure for business to thrive.
He ssid "We are back on track again , we have commissioned a set of six speed boats that would enable us police out maritime domain so that safety and security would be reinstalled"
"The flag-off exercise started last week and we intend to sustain it to make sure that our MoU with the navy in making sure our maritime domain is safe for business"
"The maritime industry has to be safe and secure for ships to come and country has be known for several maritime vice and NIMASA is quite mindful of this"
"Along the line we discovered that PPP is the way to go, we found out that we could not actually maintain patrol boats to man patrol boats to protect our maritime domain"
"Bureaucracy that runs government makes it difficult for us to maintain the facility and we thought of engaging the private sector and we did so well in the past ensuring that we engage those who would enable us provide the platforms to do our maritime strategies to ensure that our maritime domain is free of pirates on the waters"
"We made some appreciable success in that despite some setbacks"
On the changing of Nigeria contract of crude afreightment, the NIMASA DG noted that it is worrying to note that there is no single Nigerian company that has been able to take crude oil out of the country.
"We are tired of FOB Nigeria must take its position in the committee of nations in the affreightment of their cargoes. We must ensure we lobby our lawmakers through advocacy to ensure that terms of trade changes from free onboard to CIF, NIMASA is championing this course, i can assure you that in less than no time, Nigerians would be lifting the most dare commodity we have which is the crude oil"
"As a maritime regulator we are going to provide cargo support for Nigerians, we would identify all the cargoes for the public sector. Bring the stakeholders together and facilitate their movement"
Discussion about this post