“We must continue to work together to ensure that the maritime sector is as green as possible”
Capt Sunday Umoren is the Secretary General, Abuja Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Port State Control. In this interview with Oluyinka Onigbinde and Joshua Yousouph, he talks about the MoU and related issues.
What is the Abuja Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) all about?
Clearly, Abuja MoU is one of the regional MoUs set up by the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) that is tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that no substandard vessels trade within the regions and also to harmonise the inspection regime. Harmonisation in the sense that whatever a vessel is exposed to experience in respect to inspection in Ghana would be similar with what it is going to experience in Nigeria and Togo. When we have such harmonised systems, ship owners don’t have anything negative in term of impression; like this is a weak port or that a particular country is less stringent with respect to IMO regulations whereby every vessel tend to be going there and running away from the ones they think are quite tough. It is a case of whatever you see in country ‘A’ is what you see in country ‘B’. The system is harmonized and by so doing all the ship owners are somehow forced to fully comply with the stipulations of all the conventions and regulations.
Do you consider Abuja MoU to be among the top MoUs in the world?
We are nine MoUs in all. Nine plus one, because America stands alone. I could say we are not there yet. If you can recall what I said when I took over; was that we will aim at being at the top quarter. We are striving towards maintaining that enviable position and we are slowly making headway and progress. Hopefully in less than no time, we would hit that mark.
Since you assumed office, what have you been able to achieve so far?
I always quote Isaac Newton with the popular saying that his achievements have been because he stood on the shoulders of the giants. Abuja MoU has been on since October 1999. A lot of things have been done, a lot of structures have been set. When I came in, I knew that things have been quite good and we need to focus more on operational excellence which has been the areas that we have actually looked at. Clearly, one of the best achievements I will say is, in respect to communication among member states. When a vessel is part of the caveat of the inspection could be, “fix this at a particular port”; all because the inspecting country could have the capability of fixing a particular number of conformity that has been highlighted. So it could be a cases of fixing it at the next port. If a vessel jumps detention, you need to inform the next port. There has always been a problem because in time past, one Director General of a Maritime Administration writing to the other DG which could take a month or two before the information would be conveyed to the other country and within that period, the vessels could have discharged and left. What we did was using a very simple technology which is the WhatsApp group. We created a WhatsApp group for all the Port State Control Officers in the region. So as instance, if there is any notification or anything that needs to be shared, it is put on the platform and all the Port State Control Officers would be waiting for the vessel to arrive.
We have also moved again that sometimes we have warnings from other MoUs about an errant or substandard vessel or a vessel has been blacklisted coming to our region and we are always left with “where is the vessel?” So we did what we call a Data Agreement with any country that has maritime domain awareness capability like the Deep blue project in the Nigeria. We had agreement, in which case if we have such information, we get to them and they tell us where the vessel is or the vessel is tracked. With that, once we have any notification on a substandard vessels coming into our region, our eyes are on the vessel. We’ve achieved a lot of that. We’ve also introduced what we called the Mentor and Mentee scheme. This is because we have a lot of disparity. There are some countries who are doing so well with respect to inspection, while other countries were struggling. So struggling countries needed some support through the Mentor Mentee scheme where the countries that are doing so we can easily support the countries that are struggling with the inspection regime. They actually spend some time with them, get them through all the job training. We’ve also had a lot of trainings for our Port State Control Officers both Virtual and physical trainings. This is because the Maritime Safety committee brings up revision of their regulations almost every year. So there is a need for the Port State Control Officers to be trained and retrained to keep abreast of the latest amendment or revision that has come into force. So we have done very well with respect to training. We have also had a training for the policy makers because the Port State Control officers are like the middle cadre officers in an establishment. So what about the policy makers? If you don’t secure their buy-in, you are just wasting your time. So we worked with the IMO to have a training with all the Directors General in our region, which was done in Lagos in May. This was to enlighten them more and to secure their buy-in. I can tell you that there have been a lot of changes after the training and we are monitoring that. In respect to our sensitory meetings, we have been keeping to time and we have not missed any. In fact, in the next two weeks, within the 10th and 12th of November, we would be having our committee meeting in the Gambia. We’ve also gone to the field prior to our committee meetings where we go to the Port State Control Officers to feel their heartbeat on what their issues are. This is because we have the DGs all attending the committee meetings. There is a Ministerial meeting also coming, where all the Transport Ministers from our member- states will be attending. So we would be their voice in conveying the issues they have. We are also looking at working with some maritime training institutions to start the training of Port State Control Officers, because as at now, there no institution offering such training. It is either you send people to Italy or other places. We had a meeting with the training institution in Abidjan in Cote d’Ivoire and we looking at having one with the Maritime Academy of Nigeria, Oron very soon. We are working with the academics and maritime training institutions to have in place a sort of certificated trainings for Port State Control Officers. There are quite a number of things we have been working on and we would keep at it.
How many participating countries do we have in the Abuja MoU presently?
Locationally, if we talk of how many countries are in the region, we have 22 countries in the West and Central African region from Mauritania down to South Africa. However, with respect to signing up and ratifying as a full member, we have 18 countries as of date. So, four are outstanding and we are very hopeful that within the next two months, three may be signing-up. The outstanding countries are Mauritania, Equatorial Guinea, Democratic Republic of Congo and Namibia. So we are sure three will be joining very soon.
Why the delays in joining the MoU by these countries?
It is a policy thing and also international diplomacy. When it comes to membership, the IMO will not force you to sign up to a new convention, but it will be made clear to you the pros of joining or signing-up to a particular convention. Yes, it will be brought to the notice, but they must have the willingness and must be ready. This is because if you force them in, then you would force them to stay and comply. That is not the spirit. The spirit is willingness. We have been constantly visiting them, sending reminders to them and even allowing them to attend our trainings and meeting, notwithstanding. This is just a way that, I am telling them that this is the right time to come in. So Equatorial Guinea, DRC and Mauritania are ready; so in the next three months we are hoping to get them in, while we still push for all the remaining ones.
What is the total number of ships Abuja MoU has been able to inspect this year? What are the categories of vessels you inspect and some of the infractions?
The figures are not static. If I give you a figure now, it may change in the next two minutes because it is a continuous thing. Normally we work based on our annual reports which are fixed. Last year, 2605 vessels where inspected by 13 member-states which participated; out of 18. We are also working on getting the other member states to participate. 23 vessels were detained for different contraventions and 1274 deficiencies were noted among the 2605 vessels. If you go to our website, you can get access to our annual report where you see the breakdown of the percentage made by each country because we have a minimum requirement. It is recommended that countries should inspect at least 15% of foreign vessels because Port State Inspection has the right to inspect foreign ships coming to your port and by agreement every member states should inspect at least 50% of foreign vessels entering their waters.
Earlier this year, you made mention of the Port State Control Officers to start putting body cameras for inspection. Have they started doing that?
What we actually said was that it was actually at an experimental level, that Australia actually started experimenting on the use of body cameras to improve transparency of operations and I think China too has also started. It hasn’t been made a law yet, because there are also issues about the body cameras. Some vessels carry volatile product to which every equipment you use must be certified to be intrinsically safe. It means you have to get a Body Cam that will be safe for you to have to work in every environment because it can actually become a source of ignition that could trigger an explosion on the vessel. So what we said was more of advising our member states to look at that aspect in joining that trials. It is still at the trial level and the way we work in shipping is that it is universally regulated by IMO. So it is IMO that can come up to say that it is now the new rule before countries can now implement. As at today, no country has volunteered to join the trial. In our forthcoming meeting in The Gambia in November, we are still going to sing that song again and hopefully we will have a choir.
How many conventions do we have under the Abuja MoU?
Today, we have 16 conventions and what we do is that a convention must be domesticated by at least four or five countries before it is made a standard convention. So as at date we have 16 conventions that Abuja MoU has approved as relevant instrument. The flag state and individual countries will now have to ratify and domesticate them. This is because if you don’t domesticate them, it means it is not part of your national laws and if it is not part of your national laws, you have no legal backing to inspect a vessel against such. That is why we are always pushing member states. In every meeting we publish all the conventions and the countries that have ratified and domesticated them for others to be encouraged. We also link them up with IMO for any support they need in the ratification and the domestication of any of relevant instruments.
What is the Abuja MoU doing as regards some of the emissions from ships? Do you think it is the right thing to ban single hull vessels from plying our waters?
When it comes to maritime safety, it depends on the degree of exposure. Single hull vessels actually present the greatest exposure. Single hull means you just have a single plate that separate the vessel hull from the oil, so if there’s any incident and then the hull is bridged or punctured, it goes in straight and what happens, there will be influx and oil could easily flow out there. But when we have double hull, in between the two hull, we would actually use them as a balance tank. So if there’s an accident affecting the outer shell, it is only water that comes out. So the second shell is the barrier that protects the vessel. It is the right thing. Nigeria has also banned the use of Single hull vessels. That is left to individual countries. However, for foreign vessels, you won’t have any single hull vessels trading. For some countries they could say for vessels trading locally, they can still use single hull vessels if they don’t carry up a particular capacity of oil. However, we have been pushing for greener shipping. Even as we are today, there is an element of greenness in shipping. The percentage of greenness is by the regulation we have today. We have grown from 3.5 percent to 0.5 percent. So it is some sort of greenness. So with that, as from 4th of June as the regulation is coming to force, all the member states are implementing that. We are working with IMO towards year 2050 strategies where new regulations and conventions will come into place and enforcement will follow. Enforcement is strictly left to the flag state. We are fully committed to green shipping because of our environment. The world is not partitioned and we must continue to work together to ensure that the maritime sector is as green as possible.
Kindly like us on Facebook/twitter
