By Steve Agbota
The Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) has secured Federal Government’s approval to privatise the N50 billion modular floating dock.
The floating dock, which has been idle for more than three years is to become operational in the first quarter of 2022 on Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangment and would be used for ship repairs and job creation.
Addressing newsmen in Lagos, Director General of NIMASA, Dr. Bashir Jamoh, assured stakeholders that the apex maritime regulatory agency would revamp the floating dock.
“The dock would not be solely operated by government or NIMASA alone. We have handed it over under a PPP arrangment. As usual, the issue of privatisation of any government property goes through processes, and the floating dock is undergoing those processes.
“The Director General of the Infrastructure Concession Regulatory Commission (ICRC) was here to give us the first certificate, telling us that privatising the modular floating dock is bankable, doable, profitable and they gave us the go ahead to do that.”
“We have also gone ahead with the managing partner and co-patner, which is the Nigerian Ports Authority NPA, with the provision of continental shipyard.
We expect in no distant future latest by February 2022, the Federal Executive Council (FEC) should approve the privatisation because it’s a national asset,” he added.
According to him, the cost implications cannot be handled by the federal government alone, adding that privatisation would aid the floating dock operations and the foreign counterparts will take up the class conditions before the usage deployment.
Meanwhile, Jamoh has disclosed that between January and December 2021, NIMASA remitted N37.691 billion to the federation account, compared to N31. 839 billion it remitted in 2020.
This was even as it said the Agency’s Marine Accident Investigation Unit also investigated 12 accidents compared with 18 in 2020.
“The year 2021 saw the agency paying to the federal government N37.691 billion and this is from levies and others. The Agency’s target is to attain more than N37 billion in 2022. We believe the N37 billion generated is not our own milestone; we are working hard to ensure we get to the promise land,” he said.
While reeling out some of the achievements of the agency in terms of flag state control which has to do with survey and inspection of vessels in accordance with the safety requirements of the Merchant Shipping Act 2007, he said 489 vessels were surveyed in 2021 which is 43.6 per cent higher than the total number of condition survey carried out in 2020 at 276 vessels.
“This is an indication of the maritime administration’s seriousness in terms of flag state survey. For the port state control functions of NIMASA, a total of 429 foreign vessels were boarded to ensure that each vessel maintained safety, pollution standards while at our ports and waters,” he added.
According to him, the total number of condition survey for flag registration conducted in 2020 was 276 while in 2021 it was 489.
For the port state implementation, he said the 2021 figure as recorded was 675 vessels, which is 24.2 per cent higher than the number of inspections carried out in 2020 of 510 vessels.