NIMASA  seeks to empowers coastal communities to stem maritime crimes.

Abiola Seun    |

The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has declared the agency’s intention to introduce educational, entrepreneurship training, and skills acquisition programmes in the areas of fishing, clearing and forwarding, and legal bunkering for residents of coaster communities.

Director-General of NIMASA, Dr. Bashir Jamoh, disclosed this in Abuja during a working visit to the interim Sole Administrator of Presidential Amnesty Programme (PAP), Col. Milland Dixon Dikio (rtd.).

According to Dr Jamoh, introducing the programmes in the coastal communities is a way of empowering the residents and discouraging criminal tendencies.

He further disclosed his intention to work in partnership with PAP in the fight against piracy and other crimes in the country’s maritime domain.

Jamoh underscored the importance of collaboration among relevant agencies and communities in the quest for maritime security, saying, “We should be working together in partnership to help us appreciate and evaluate the challenges from our various perspectives and collectively come up with solutions that would work for all of us, and the country at large.

“Security problems more often than not have a local content. So, as the country’s maritime regulatory agency, we want to partner the amnesty programme, which interfaces with the littoral communities, to nip the security challenges in the bud, and stand our nation in good stead for the optimisation of our huge maritime resources.”

Jamoh has prioritised advocacy for inter-agency cooperation in the fight against maritime insecurity since his appointment last year.

He stated, “We cannot proffer solution to the issues and crisis in the Niger Delta without the collaboration of the Presidential Amnesty Programme.”

The Director-General said a Maritime Intelligence Unit was recently established by NIMASA to help in the identification of early warning signs in order to prevent security breaches in the littoral areas. He revealed that many of the assets being installed and deployed under the Integrated National Security and Waterways Protection Infrastructure (the Deep Blue Project) had intelligence gathering capabilities through air, land and sea surveillance.

Dikio however commended Jamoh for his vision and commitment to maritime security. He also praised the NIMASA Director-General for his passion for inter-agency coordination and collaboration in the security of Nigeria’s maritime environment.

He said detecting the early warning signs and engaging early responses to prevent security challenges at their early stages would be vigorously pursued.

The PAP boss expressed the willingness of his agency to partner with NIMASA, especially in the empowerment of the locals. He suggested that the people’s knowledge of the local communities should be leveraged in the area of information gathering.

Dikio advised that the training programme being planned by NIMASA should target subjects relevant to the Niger Delta in order to impact them directly and get to the root of the problem.

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