The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has assured that it is ready to collaborate and work with the Lagos State Government, as well as other riverine states in order to ensure waterways across the country are made viable and adequately developed.
The newly-appointed Acting Managing Director of NIWA; Barrister Danladi Ibrahim gave the assurance during a press parley in Lagos yesterday.
The National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA) has assured that it is ready to collaborate and work with the Lagos State Government, as well as other riverine states in order to ensure waterways across the country are made viable and adequately developed.
The newly-appointed Acting Managing Director of NIWA; Barrister Danladi Ibrahim gave the assurance during a press parley in Lagos yesterday.
Danladi lamented that the bad blood between NIWA and the Lagos State Government, as well as other riverine states have affected the development of inland waterways adversely.
He promised that the management of NIWA under his watch will any moment from now pay a visit to all the state governments in other to ensure collaboration in building the waterways.
He said, "As relates to the conflict between NIWA and the States governments; Lagos, Bayelsa and other riverine states, this conflict has really affected the development of the inland waterways greatly"
"What we intend to do this time around that we have a new government is to collaborate with these states, any moment from now we will visit all the state governments and collaborate, we believe that by collaboration the issues will be resolved and our inland waterways will be resolved instead of legal tussles" he said
Danladi also revealed plans by the agency to construct a 45storey edifice in Lagos so as to establish its presence.
He said that the agency is partnering with a company in Dubai on a PPP basis to implement this.
He said that the edifice will among other things consist of five floors of shopping mall, ten floors of parking garage and a train station which will be connected to the building directly. He also assured that a modern jetty will be constructed at the office.
"We intend to have a 45-storey office tower in Lagos here; we would have 5 floors of shopping mall and 10 floors of car park. We will also have a train station that will link the edifice, this is what we intend to do in a short while and then build a modern jetty"
The NIWA boss assured the agency is worried about the frequent accidents on the waterways, assuring that it now have a transportation code just like it is done in road transportation, and that there would be penalties for offenders to the code.
According to him, as soon as the code is gazetted, all issues of overloading and over speeding of boats will be combated, thereby reducing the loss of lives.
He said that the major challenge of NIWA presently is funding and that the authority already has a blueprint to solve its funding challenges.
"All over the world, inland waterways are funded through trust funds contributed by stakeholders, in Nigeria we have one of the biggest pool of stakeholders"
"Eighty percent of the oil exploration done in this country are carried out within our waterways, all the dames that generate electricity are right inside our waterways negating the navigability of the waterways and none of these companies have ever given us anything to correct the negativity, these are the areas we are looking into to correct the issue of funding." he said
Discussion about this post