The Senate Committee on Marine Transport yesterday embarked on a fact-finding mission to the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) to understand the responsibilities of the agency before approving their budget for 2016.
The Committee led by its Chairman, former Governor of Zamfara State, Senator Sani Ahmed Yerima visited NIMASA and told the management that the committee is interested in the activities of NIMASA including contracts and projects embarked upon in 2015 and plans to be undertaken in 2016.
The Committee later visited the Nigerian Shippers Council where it equally mandated the Executive of the Council Barrister Hassan Bello to furnish the team with responsibilities and full report on the agency.
He said the committee has deemed it fit to have an interactive session with the agencies and understand their performance before passing their budgets.
”Though we are very engaged in this year’s budget activities, we found it necessary that before we approve this years’ budget to come here and have this interactive session with you so that we can appreciate the proposal submitted and do the best we can to ensure that what is needed to be done is done appropriately”
“The major aim of our present visit is to have an in depth look at the activities of this agency, what NIMASA undertook in the past year and the plan for implementation of activities identified to be undertaken in the current year”
“We therefore require the corporation of the DG and all management and staff of NIMASA as members of the senate team would be asking for not only information but documents that will help us to do our work and I hope these documents will be made available” Yerima stated.
Speaking, NIMASA’’s Acting Director, Mr. Haruna Baba Jauro presented the senators with the performance of the agency for 2015 which he explained to include capacity building efforts and revenues collected.
Jauro told the Senate committee that the 2015 budget performance would not be as high as previous years because of the change in government which has affected the agency and the probe of its immediate past Director General, Patrick Akpobolokemi.
He said “most of the things said have to do with the contracts that are being carried out, we went to the ministry to make sure we have an evaluation of the projects that are ongoing, the contracts that were given and the committee set up then was given a time frame but unfortunately uptil this moment they are yet to submit their report”
“The report will be submitted very soon so that we can look at the projects that has been given before and we can go back to the ministry and see which one to continue and which one not to continue” he said.
Giving a breakdown of the agency’s revenue performance for 2015, Jauro said the revenue collected stood at N70.8billion.
“The Cabotage funds that we have now, the figures change but now we have N51.8billion.
Our remittance to the federal account rundown over the past five years is N42.2billion”
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