By Stephen Ubanna
Barely one week after Bashir Jamoh, a resourceful Director General of Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, Launched the e-platform for registration of Dockworkers and seafarers and issuance of Biometric Identity Cards, to them, an appreciative Isah Idris, Comptroller General, Comptroller General, Nigerian Immigration Service, NIS, had given kudos to the NIMASA Director General and his Management Team for taking the bold initiative of automation of the Dockworkers registration nationwide.
The NIS, Chief Executive Officer has every reason to commend the Kaduna state born technocrat and his management team for automation of Dockworkers and seafarers registration nationwide. This is because since the establishment of the Nigerian Maritime Authority Authority, NMA, in 2007 by Ibrahim Babangida, a retired Army General and former Nigerian military President and its subsequent merger with theJoint Maritime Labour Industrial Council, JOMALIC, in August 2006, by former President Olusegun Obasanjo, to form, NIMASA, no past Chief Executive Officer , CEO, of the maritime regulatory agency may have considered it necessary to come up with ideas that could help to register the dockworkers and seafarerers at the nation’s seaports and the oil terminals .
Many believe that if the Dockworkers and seafarers who are scattered all over the Lagos ports of Apapa, Tincan Island and the south east Rivers port, PortHacourt, Onne, Delta and Calabar port in Cross River state , including the 20 offshore Crude Oil terminals, that includes Escravos, Forcados, Bonny , Brass, Qua Iboe among others, have been properly registered over the ears and issued with Identity cards for easy identification by name by the agency, they would have been put under control.
Maritime analysts believe that the crime rate, particular, piracy activities in Nigerian maritime domain and the offshore oil terminals located in Delta, Rivers and Akwa Ibom states ostensibly for lifting of crude oil into the international oil market would have been curbed. The crime rate within the nation’s maritime domain and the Gulf of Guinea, may have become pronounced because of the too many people who have no business with the ports and oil terminals that found their way in parading themselves as Dockworkers ostensibly to steal and go.
Perhaps to guarantee adequate security at the nation’s seaports and offshore oil terminals may have informed why the Leadership of NIMASA and the NIS, have agreed ‘’to deepen their existing interagency collaboration with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, MOU, on seafarers ‘Travel document among others.
The agreement was said to have been signed when Idris, the Comptroller General, NIS, led a Team on a working visit to NIMASA to parlay with Jamoh led NIMASA in Lagos, the nation’s commercial nerve centre recently. Jamoh, the NIMASA boss may have taken advantage of the visit of the NIS Comptroller General and his Team to reiterate on ‘’the role of NIS in enhancing the security of the nation’s maritime domain’’. He noted that that ‘’the issuance of travel documents to seafarers by the agency is a key component to grow the country’s maritime industry to compete with other maritime nations’’.
At present, NIMASA, has a signed working MOU, with World Maritime Unviversity , WMoU, Malmo, Sweden, and other maritime institutions both within and outside the country where Nigerian seafarers were sent annually for training. There is no gain saying the fact that the students will always need their International passports to be able to secure VISAs to travel to their respective institutions outside the country for training.
An elated Jamoh, who could not hide his feelings with the signed MoU, with the NIS, had told those that cares to listen that ‘’security at the nation’s seaports and oil terminals ‘’ is a key to achieving a safe and secure maritime domain of the country’’.
Appealing to the sister agency ‘’to ensure that that continues to play a major role in issues of Crew nationality, issuance of seafarers travel document and managing issues of ostowaways , among others, he said it is the only way to fully checkmate piracy activities and the issue of stowaways and other maritime crime at the nation’s seaports and oil terminals.
The NIMASA irector Gneral appeal may have struck the right chord, that may have encouraged Idris, the NIS, CEO, to have also agreed to develop an MoU ‘’to provide a framework for the working relationship between the two agencies’’.
The NIS, Comptroller General, was said to have ‘’identified issuance of temporary work permits to international vessel Crews as well as preventing stowaways’’ as areas that should call for frequent collaboration between the two agencies’’.
The NIMASA helmsman who had ‘’appreciated the need to work closely with NIS to improve security in the nation’s maritime and the Gulf of Guinea was said to have spoken about the contribution of the NIS, in the implementation of the Suppression of Piracy and other Maritime Offences, SPOMO, Bill that was passed by the National Assembly, and signed into Law by President Muhammadu Buhari in June 2019 and subsequent prosecution of offenders under the Law.
He had confirmed that the agency had worked closely with the NIS to prosecute offenders caught in the act assuring industry stakeholders that the agency will continue ‘’to offer its helping hand to the sister agency even as it anticipates further collaboration in the future’’.
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