A group known as the Marine Club of Nigeria (MCN) has condemned the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) for announcing it's remittance of N20 billion to the Federation Account in 2017 alone, saying that the agency has lost focus on its mandate.
In a statement sent to Shipping Position Daily and signed by Dr. Chinedu Jideofo, President of the MCN said it is not the duty of NIMASA to indulge in some competition on remittances to the Federation Account. He said the duty of NIMASA is to develop and expand the maritime economy, which the Government also benefits from through employments, infrastructural facilities, taxes.
The Marine Club queried why NIMASA is remitting such huge money to the Federation Account when the maritime industry is starved of funding.
"We frown on what seems like a case of a man who starves his family so as to pay tithe, or another case of yet another man who robs Peter to pay Paul.
The Nigerian maritime economy needs urgent and massive injection of capital, including in revamping of Nigeria's moribund refining sector"
"Granted, the agencies need approval by the Federal Executive Council to spend on such huge capital projects (even though we don't think that FEC is an appropriate body for approval of any maritime expenditure), but we are not satisfied that the agencies have been as interested in making those critical maritime project-proposals as in impressing the Federal Government with humongous remittances to the Federation Account" the statement reads.
The Marine Club also noted that these humongous remittances are also a reflection of the fact that essential maritime projects and programmes that fell within approval limits of agency CEOs, agency boards and supervising ministers of the maritime agencies had suffered some neglect or starvation.
It stated that remittances to Federation Account should be of operating and investment surpluses, just like companies pay taxes on operating profits.
The group however charged NIMASA and other maritime agencies to return to their original and persisting mandates and refocus on them.
"Nigerian Maritime Economy (NIME) needs maritime production facilities such as shipbuilding and fabrication yards, we need many and functional free trade zones across Nigeria, we need functional and more refineries, we need at least 10 big training vessels attached to seafaring schools, we need better and more maritime universities and academies, we need regularly dredged and maintained waterways plus standard and functional river ports"
"We need to fully occupy our offshore waters and control our fishery and mineral resources, we need hundreds of Nigerian-owned and Nigerian-registered vessels, we need Nigeria Air that owns a fleet of aircraft packed in and operating from our international airports (Port Harcourt, Kano, Lagos, Enugu, Abuja) with world-class facilities including at least two standard runways each, we need all rail lines in standard gauge and more of them to every state capital and Abuja"
"We need a navigable canal from the Niger/Benue confluence to Abuja and another to Ilorin, we need at least one maritime bank and one marine insurance company, we need very many things that require every naira earned by maritime-economy agencies".
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