Mr. Rotimi Amaechi,
Omololu Ogunmade in Abuja

The federal government on Tuesday said it might soon initiate a bill seeking to repeal the Act which created the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) if its management continues to squander the huge resources at its disposal.
Speaking during a meeting with the Senate Committee on Marine Transport, Minister of Transportation, Mr. Rotimi Amaechi, said NIMASA squandered awhopping N63 billion revenue it generated last year.
He also said it was unfortunate that the government could not find any equipment at NIMASA’s search and rescue unit for the monitoring of vessels’ movements as well as treatment of injured personnel.
Amaechi said: “Currently, the way NIMASA is, if you look at it very well, it was worse in the last administration. It was as if it was established just for the purpose of collecting money and nothing more. What we need to do is to ensure that NIMASA discharges its core responsibilities.
“If NIMASA failed to outsource its core responsibility, then it has no business existing. If it is just to collect money from individuals, anybody can do that. We can hire a tax collector to collect money from maritime operators on behalf of Federal Ministry of transportion.
“So it is either NIMASA sits up and carries out its own responsibility or we come to the National Assembly to repeal the Act setting it up and allow the department of marine security in the Ministry of Transportation to discharge the responsibility currently being discharged by NIMASA.”
Furthermore, Amaechi said: “We are not going ahead with the university project proposed by NIMASA because we have a an institution in Oron, we have Nigeria Institute of Transport Technology, Zaria, and we have the Nigerian College of Aviation in Zaria which we could upgrade to a university status and NIMASA is proposing to build a new one.
“Who will attend the university? How many parents will allow their children to go to such place where it proposes to site the university? What is the aim of the university that we cannot achieve in Oron where they have all the necessary infrastructure?
“I don’t think we are proceeding with the university being proposed by NIMASA because it is a waste of resources, and unfortunately, a lot of money had already been released for the university project hence there is no structure on ground but just the feasibility study.
“Whoever is holding on to the money should better return it. The Chinese company contracted confirmed that only the feasibility study was in place.”
On the need by the federal government to encourage individuals to buy vessels, Amaechi said experience in the aviation industry had shown that when such an idea was conceived, about N300 billion was released to encourage investors in the sector by the last administration but some collected the money and ran out of the country
He added: “In fact there is a particular man who collected N32 billionn and left the country. I don’t think that the federal government needed to release N52 billion to investors in the maritime industry. What we are considering is to facilitate a partnership arrangement between the operators and foreign investors in which case we can support Nigerians who have shown serious interests in the business with about 40 percent of the investment while their foreign partners bring 60 percent. That will assure us that we would recoup our investment.”
Amaechi also said NIMASA handed over its responsibility to ex-Niger Delta militant, Government Ekpemupolo, also known as Tompolo.
He said whereas NIMASA was established to protect Nigeria’s waterways, it chose to hand over this responsibility to Tompolo.
The minister said: “The responsibility of NIMASA is to protect Nigeria’s water ways but it has out-sourced its responsibility to a private firm, Global west, which Tompolo has interest in.
The minister said: “The responsibility of NIMASA is to protect Nigeria’s water ways but it has out-sourced its responsibility to a private firm, Global west, which Tompolo has interest in.
“We need to first address the contract of global west with NIMASA. I was extremely disappointed NIMASA made N63 billion annually and this money is not remitted to the government coffers. At the moment, N53 billion is at Treasury Single Account (TSA) of NIMASA.”
Amaechi said the federal government would carry out general audit of marine sector with a view to knowing the state of activities in the sector.
“The idea is to know whether the system is failing or not, if it is failing, why? The economy cannot grow without the growth of marine sector. We must get our marine right to improve our gross domestic product (GDP).”
While Patrick Ziakede Akpobolokemi, former Director General of NIMASA, is currently under trial over alleged embezzlement of fund, an anti-graft agency is on the trail of Tompolo
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