The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) last week absolved itself of any complicity in the award of contract for salvaging and refloating of the 14 vessels that were washed ashore near Takwa Bay in Lagos on February14, this year.
The agency awarded the contract to Atlantic Marine Services AMS-BP joint venture for the sum of $1.7 million.
But the company only salvaged four of the distressed vessels and left the site after 14 days which made owners of the grounded vessel to complain over the contractor’s inability to salvage the remaining 10 vessels before abandoning the site.
Reacting to the incident, NIMASA’s deputy director, public affairs, Ms Ego Nwokocha stressed that NIMASA followed due process in the award of the contract
She explained that the contractor, Atlantic Marine Services’ quotation was the least among the companies that bided for the job.
According to her, the seemingly huge contract sum was due to the highly technical nature of the exercise and the specialised nature of the equipment that were used.
Nwokocha explained further that the equipment that were used for the exercise were sourced from abroad and paid for based on the number of days they were to be used , thus explaining why the contract terms were based of numbers of days and not numbers of vessels to be pulled out.
She revealed that the exercise is an on-going one and that the agency has already submitted the report of the first phase of the exercise to the ministry of transport and assured shipowners whose vessels were yet to be salvaged that the agency was awaiting the approval for the second phase of the exercise to commence.
“All the beached vessels would be salvaged, but if any of the owners is in a hurry, they could embark on the salvage exercise themselves. After all, we asked them before the exercise if any of them could salvage the ones that belong to them, but because NIMASA has the statutory responsibility to clear the channel of any encumbrance for easy navigation, that is why we have taken it upon ourselves to salvage the beached vessels” she added.
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