NIMASA: How Peterside Led AAMA Gave Global Visibility To African Maritime

By  Stephen Ubanna

Indigenous Ship owners  and their counterparts in other parts of African have given kudos to   Dakuku peterside, Director General, Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, NIMASA, over his inspiring leadership of the Association of  African Maritime Administration, AAMA,  the African equivalent of the International Maritime Organisation, IMO which had brought it into global limelight.

Peterside exhibited his wealth of experience  which is rooted in the  Nigerian  Maritime  sector, at the recent meeting of the Association in the North African country of Morocco when he stood up to speak   during  the Executive Council meeting  as he received a standing ovation.

  The NIMASA  Director General, who could not hide his feelings said ” there is need  for concerted efforts to be made by the various  Maritime Administrations in Africa   to compete  favourably with their  counterparts  in  other parts of the world”.  He noted that the spread of the  choice Executive members of the Associatio to cover the Central Africa,  East Africa, West Africa, North Africa and South African  sub regions including the land locked countries speaks volume.

 Maritime watchers believe that it as  to ”ensure  that every region is well represented   to avoid complaints of marginalisation or not being carried along in the formulation of Maritime policies for the Continent by any region .

At present, the Representatives of the Central African sub-region in the body are  Cameroun and Cape Verde while Cote d’Ivoire and Ghana represent the West African sub-region. The East African Representatives are  Tanzania and Comoros Island, Southern Africa has Mozambique and South Africa but  North Africa has Egypt and Sudan to represent them in the Association.  Uganda, according to AAMA sources, had been representing the land-locked countries to give them a voice in the African Maritime Administration Association.

Peterside, the AAMA , boss  had reminded the Maritime Administrators at the  Cassablanca, Morocco meeting   about the primary  aim of  coming together which is to ”uphold  the basic tenets  of the African Maritime  Transport Charter, AMTC,  which was  to” improve  the Capacity, capability  and performance  of African Maritime Administrations and the    Shipping sector”’.  The Nigerian Maritime Administrator  averred that that the coming into being of AAMA would   go a long to” encourage the various African  Maritime Administrations to  pay attention  on  ”human resources development, technology and information sharing”.

This may have informed the reason  why  the AAMA, chairman, who incidentally is the Director General, NIMASA, had paid attention to the training and retraining of Staff  both within and outside the country  on Maritime and Shipping  Administrations  over the last three years.

The AAMA Chairman was said to have  enjoined his colleagues not to hesitate  in making  valuable contributions to the course of promoting AAMA as this will help  to achieve the set  objectives  of the Association  in the African Continent.

Given the enormous responsibility saddled on him as the Chairman of the nascent  African Maritime Association, Peterside assured the African Maritime Administrators that they have no cause to worry. ” Let me assure you  that we will  not relent  in our efforts  to build  a competitive and vibrant  maritime and shipping sector  that would give Africa a voice  among the comity of other Maritime nations”, he said. 

The NIMASA boss who is concerned on how to take the African  maritime and shipping business to another level  maintains that Africa should be their major focus for sustainable growth. ”African is our hope for sustainable growth”, he insists.

He is optimistic that decisions reached at the AAMA meetings  would go a long way in ”actualising  the ATC  charter.  Recall that that the NIMASA boss  was elected  as the Chairman of the African Maritime Administration  in its Conference in Nigeria in 2017. He was , however,  re-elected in its 2018 Conference in  in Egypt, North Africa.

Isiechi Osamgbi, the Agency Deputy Director  in-charge of  Public Relations disclosed that he was  re-elected because of the ” visibility  his leader ship has given AAMA both within and outside Africa”  in the last two years.  Give the pressure of work in the nation’s maritime sector which demands urgent attention, he may want to relinquish posion for anot  country Maritime Administrator by the  Maritime Administrators from the different African countries appear reluctant to let him go, fueling speculation that he  may be re-elected for the third time  if the Moroccan Maritime Administrator refuses to step in. as the host.

The third session of the  AAMA’s  EXCO  meeting  in the North African country  this year   was said to have focused  on several  issues that delved  on how  the Association will  continue  to drive  the its ”vision, ambition and strategy for the development of African  Maritime domain”.