Ameachi, Sarumi to grace Maritime Technical Summit

By Seun Abiola |

The Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi will be the Special Guest of Honour at the 2nd Maritime Technical Summit coming up on the 22nd of May, 2018 in Lagos.
The summit which has as its theme, “Ship Operations in Nigeria: Policy, Technical, Financial Challenges and Solutions: The Perspective of the Association of Marine Engineers and Surveyors (AMES)” is scheduled to take off by 10:00am.
Speaking on the summit, the Vice President of AMES and Chairman Planning Committee Engr. Yinka Okunade, observed that the Technical Summit is to identify a particular problem facing the maritime industry and to proffer solution and suggest those solutions to the authorities.
Okunade stated that the theme of the summit was built around issues affecting the maritime industry.

He disclosed that many important dignitaries have been lined up to participate in the summit. They include Engr. Olu Akinsoji, the Chairman of the Committee on Ship Registry Engr. Emmanuel Ilori”, the Executive Secretary of the Nigerian Shippers’ Council (NSC), Barr. Hassan Bello, Greg Ogbeifun of Stars among others.

According to Okunade, Diamond Bank will be in attendance to give an insight into the problems they faced in financing ship acquisition and maintenance because this is one area we are having a lot of problems when it comes to capacity building.

“In fact, we have our own respectable Czar in the industry, Chief Adebayo Sarumi is going to be there also to moderate the technical section”, he said.
The AMES boss recalled that the previous edition of the summit held in April, 2016 at the Sheraton Hotels in Lagos recorded a lot of successes saying that, it was after that summit that a committee was set up to look at the national fleet, a committee was set up to rejig NIMASA explaining that the Committee on ship registry that was set up recently is also a fallout from the rejigging of NIMASA.
He continued,” So, you can see that a lot of good things came out of that summit and we are hoping that with this summit, better things will come.
“We have sent out letters to all the government agencies; NPA, Shippers’ Council, NIWA and of course, DG NIMASA. And again, because these parastatals are directly involved in implementing the shipping policy, we have also asked them to do ten minutes presentation each to highlight the problems they are having implementing the policies in the maritime sector”.