Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Mr Patrick Akpobolokemi has promised stakeholders in the maritime sector and indigenous ship owners in particular that one of his mandates is to ensure that the Cabotage Act is made to work in Nigeria and that he will ensure that this is achieved during his tenure. Akpobolokemi lamented that the sector has for long been allowed to be dominated by expatriates who have taken control of vital opportunities that abounds in the sector. Speaking at his first encounter with maritime journalists last week in Lagos, the new Director General vowed to ensure that the Cabotage law is made to work. “I have given a promise that we are going to take over this industry from foreigners, it is a covenant that I have entered with God, Nigerians are going to take over the job particularly the Cabotage, it is not just rhetoric and I am not just saying it to please you”. “The maritime industry if well- handled and if we do not allow the Nigerian factor to kill it is suppose to be the major employer of labour in the country, it is like a virgin land of hundreds of miles which is yet uncultivated, what has happened so far is that we are just scratching the surface, the main thing that must be done to galvanize the industry and make it competitive globally has so far been relegated to the background”, he explained He explained that he is already in consultations with the Indigenous Ship owners Association (ISAN) on how to better their lots and give them their rightful positions in the sector, he assured that the much -expected Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF) will be disbursed any moment from now. Akpobolokemi also told the journalists that he is going to improve on the welfare of the staff of NIMASA, stressing that”when we do the proper things that will take the revenues to the level we envisaged and we can perform our core functions, the workers who are going to be catalyst of the process ought to benefit and I will not relegate that aspect into the background. I have already called them and told them the policy focus of the new administration”, he said He however said that NIMASA will be prudent in its expenditures and as such any contract that is not well articulated and pursued with due process will no longer be signed by the agency. “If a purported contract that is beyond the threshold of the DG, the parastatal tenders board or the ministerial tenders board, that is suppose to go to the BPP, if something like this is not seen and you bring such documents, I will never sign it” he warned. He said that NIMASA is nobody’s private property and that he has just been called into the system to provide leadership as well as to allow the potentials of the industry to be actualized. He debunked all insinuations that he has resigned as the DG of NIMASA and explained that he never wrote any 10-page letter of resignation as reported in the media, he also cleared the air concerning the rumors of bad blood between himself and the executive directors of NIMASA.
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