NIMASA Awards: Fiddling by Nero While Rome Was Burning

Perhaps one of the most infamous Roman Emperor, Nero Claudius Caesar (37-68 AD), ruled Rome from 54 AD.

Despite his several vices, he had a burning passion for music which probably led to the apocryphal rumour that he (Nero) was fiddling with his musical instrument while the great fire of 64 AD which destroyed part of Rome was raging.

During the great conflagration, Nero was said to be playing his violin gleefully, showing total lack of emotion and concern for his people and empire which were engulfed in the inferno.

There is an uncanny similarity between what happened in Rome in 64 AD, the indifference of Nero and the parlous state of our shipping industry with the lackadaisical attitude of its administrators.

To us at nigeriamaritime360.com, we regard the NIMASA awards night held last Saturday, January 12th, 2019, as fiddling by Dakuku Peterside and his management team while the shipping sector is in crutches.

It was a merriment made amidst several challenges confronting the shipping industry.

In as much as we don’t abhor recognition and reward for hard work and excellence which NIMASA awards night pretends to stand for, we are however puzzled if all is well in the sector to merit this wasteful jamboree.

In order to put our concerns over this ill-timed merriment in a sharper perspective for proper appreciation of our position, we shall situate our argument within the context of the extent to which the current management of NIMASA has carried out the core mandate of the agency.

NIMASA, the regulatory agency of the shipping sector, draws its life, powers and functions from NIMASA Act 2007, Merchant Shipping Act 2007 and Cabotage Act 2003, the three legal instruments which define the essence of its existence.

At the core of the responsibilities and functions of NIMASA is shipping development and security and Safety of our maritime domain.

Therefore, section 22 (1) of NIMASA Act encapsulates the statutory duties of the agency which, among others, include cabotage implementation, indigenous capacity building, flag state and port state administration, administration of ship registration, maritime security administration, seafarers standard and training, wrecks removal to make the water channels safe and navigable.

To what level of success has NIMASA carried out its statutory mandate to warrant the much vaunted and hyped maritime awards where creme de la creme of the society were gathered for celebration of excellence.

Under the present leadership of NIMASA, shipping development has suffered untold neglect.

Indigenous capacity has been castrated to the point that the level of mortality among indigenous shipowners is alarming.

More than 80 percent cent of indigenous shipping companies had gone under while the remaining ones barely exist.

The Cabotage regime, enacted through the instrument of the parliament in 2003 to reserve opportunities in coastal trade for indigenous ship-owners to thrive has been moribund.

The Coastal trade has consistently and continually been under the stranglehold of foreigners who dominate the business through inordinate granting of waivers, depriving our indigenous operators the chance to survive.

The Cabotage Vessel Financing Fund (CVFF), an offshoot of the moribund Cabotage law meant to give financial life line to the struggling indigenous ship owners has been mired in controversy and secrecy.

More than 13 years of the creation of the funds, no single indigenous ship-owner has benefitted while the funds, which is ironically a contributive efforts of the hapless operators, has been serially abused by its administrators.

Isaac Jolapamo, one of the foremost indigenous shipping operators and the former Chairman of Nigeria Shipowners Association (NISA) ventilated the pains and frustration of the indigenous shipowners when he declared that he has lost hope in the Nigerian shipping industry.

Using his unfortunate experience as an example of the lot of his colleagues, Jolapamo lamented that he has lost all his ships, nay business, to government inconsistencies in the maritime industry.

So where lies the indigenous capacity building mandate of NIMASA when, under the watch of its leadership, the business of almost all the indigenous shipping companies have been wiped out.

The flag state administrations as well as administration of ship registration functions of the agency are largely performed on paper as the country ship registry system from which these functions are derived are almost in ruins.

The country has one of the most retrogressive ship registry systems in the region which holds no attraction for ship owners to fly the country’s flag.

How many ships have registered under our ship registry to fly the country’s flag since the current NIMASA management took charge of affairs in the industry?

Our ship registry is so archaic and in shambles that not even Nigerian -owned vessels are willing to fly the country’s flag.

It is disheartening to note that most of the indigenous owned vessels are registered outside the country and fly the flag of the countries of their registration.

More worrisome is that none of the NLNG vessels, in which the Federal Government has 60 percent equity shares, was registered in Nigeria.

They all fly the flag of foreign countries where they registered while they operate in Nigeria.

The indigenous shipowners prefer to fly Liberian flag and other African countries’ rather than Nigerian flag due to the pitiable state of our ship registry.

When the indigenous shipowners did not fly Nigerian flag, we are by no means surprised that no foreign ship owner would have enough confidence in our ship registry.

It was as a result of the state of our ship registry that PIL, a Singaporean shipping company which had earlier indicated to partner with the Federal Government on its ill-fated National Carrier project, eventually pulled out, thus putting paid to the ambitious project.

The management of NIMASA made half-hearted attempt to reform the ship registry when it inaugurated a technical committee last year to come up with the recommendations on how to make the ship registry attractive to both local and foreign vessels for registration.

Almost a year when the committee headed by Engineer Abiodun Ilori was inaugurated, nothing has changed.

The security of our waters fared no better.

It is one of the sacrosanct statutory duties of NIMASA to ensure secured and safe territorial waters to engender seamless navigation of vessels.

But Nigerian waters have been adjudged a hotbed for piracy, sea robbery and kidnappings by the International Maritime Bureau (IMB).

Almost every year, the IMB reel out chilling statistics of high crime rate on our waters which they said is one of the most dangerous in the world.

Early last year, foreign vessels dreaded coming to Nigerian waters due to the alarming level of insecurity which made shipping companies to slam a special surcharge on cargoes destined for Nigerian ports which they dubbed war zone.

The MoU between NIMASA and Navy has not been able to conquer this menace.

Does the seafarers standard and training present cheering news as part of NIMASA statutory duties?

It is the same grim picture as other functions.

Our competent and more experienced seafarers who trained during the glorious years of defunct Nigeria National Shipping Line(NNSL) are fast ageing and their rank depleting while the crop of our young cadets trained under the National Seafarers Development Programme (NSDP) whom we hope will take their place are largely incompetent and inexperienced which made them unmarketable and unemployable.

Most of the graduates of the programme who were trained at foreign maritime institutions lack the prerequisite seatime experience that could have transformed them to full-fledged seafarers who could compete with their foreign counterparts.

Most of these young cadets therefore took to menial jobs to survive as they could not secure gainful employment on board vessels.

Their frustration got the better of them when some of them protested at the headquarters of NIMASA last year, bemoaning their pitiable conditions.

This unrest forced the management of the agency to promise them seatime training to calm their nerves.

Only time will tell of what will eventually become of the promise to these hapless young Nigerians.

In 2017, under the watch of the present leadership of NIMASA, Nigeria lost the prized position of Category C membership of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), the prime place we lost to less fancy other African countries due to what the international shipping community perceived as the country’s wavering and unserious steps towards shipping development.

Need we say more of the unpardonable abdication by NIMASA of its statutory duties and functions?

Does NIMASA have the justification to make merry while the industry it’s supposed to develop is being consumed up in inferno?

An inferno of depleting indigenous fleet, an inferno of decaying ship registry, an inferno of monumental business losses by indigenous ship owners whose capacity has been greatly emasculated, an inferno of dearth of experienced seafarers and growing army of dejected young cadets without experience, an inferno of an unenviable toga of having one of the most dangerous waters to navigate, an inferno of stunted shipping growth.

For us, the sad commentary on the state of shipping in Nigeria, despite the deceptive picture anybody may want to paint, calls for sober reflection on the part of the industry regulatory agency rather than making merry.

To us, the yearly jamboree which NIMASA embarked on since last year is ill-conceived and ill-timed considering the sluggish steps the country is taking towards shipping development.

Like the historical Emperor Nero, Dakuku Peterside was fiddling away on his flute while the shipping industry he is meant to grow ‘burns’.