The Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA); Dr. Dakuku Peterside has blamed the failure of Nigeria at the recent elections into the Council of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) on a plethora of reasons, such as late budgetary approval by the Federal Executive Council (FEC), economic recession and late preparations.
The election in which Nigeria had wanted to be admitted into Category ‘C’ of the IMO Council was conducted as part of the global body’s meeting which held from November 27 to December 8, 2017 in London.
The NIMASA DG gave an insight into how and why Nigeria lost out when he addressed journalists on Monday at the end of a meeting of the 'G7++ Friends of Gulf of Guinea Group' in Lagos.
He also said that, contrary to earlier reports in the media which insinuated profligacy, NIMASA spent less than N100million for the IMO campaign and that only three delegates attended the conference from the agency.
He added 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 in Nigeria quest to get 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".
Explaining further, he said: "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 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".
“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.
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